The Way of the Walking Dead
by thexredxrose
Summary: My name is not important. What I have to tell you is. Listen. It may save your life some day. The life of My Chemical Romance, hunters of the living dead. mcr my chemical romance gerard mikey way frank iero ray toro bob bryar matt pelissier bert mccracken
1. This Night, Walk the Dead

**I don't own MCR or the boys' names. It has been disclaimed. Kaythnxbai! XD**

**The Way of the Walking Dead**

_being an account of the _

_experiences of myself,_

_Gerard Arthur Way,_

_and _

_My Chemical Romance_

_in our quest to bring down_

_the living dead_

I have chosen to tell you of this event. Because I have chosen to tell you, I hope you will choose to keep this an ultimate secret, more secret than I have kept it myself. And I am only telling it to one person.

You may therefore tell it to a half-a-person. Or someone who's dead.

I think the dead are walking. I would be afraid if I were a sane person. If I were you. Only I must assume that you are probably insane as well; if you believe this and keep reading, you definitely are. Any sane person would throw this book into a drawer labeled "Evidence Against the Accused" and track me down with a team of hit men. Clap me in irons, throw me in prison. Enthrone me in an electric chair.

The first thing I thought the first time I saw one of the living dead was, "Wow, that dude is messed up." Then he looked at me, and I couldn't help thinking he was really really ugly, even though I try not to see people as ugly, ever. Then he stepped back from the counter, and he walked funny. I noticed this as well. People around me noticed, and that was concerning. At first it was simple, normal... "Mommy, look at that man walking there!" So Mommy would look, and she would start to freak...actually, she started to hyperventilate...and then someone noticed her, then noticed him, who had only yet noticed one person, and that was me. He singled me out, perhaps because I had singled him out. From the moment he took his first step, I intended to kill him.

Or incapacitate him. You can't technically kill the walking dead. They are, in fact, dead.

I was carrying a gun. It has been three years since this incident happened, so don't think about trying to arrest me for it. Yes, the gun was unauthorized, so don't bother looking in the records for my name. You won't find it. Some of my friends and I had formed a sort of band that was sort of pointless. We didn't really have objectives, but we wished we did, and that was what drew us together. One decision we made that made us feel slightly more important was that we would always carry a gun with us, wherever we went. It made me more satisfied with myself; it made me feel dangerous but also stronger, because I could at any moment shoot whoever annoyed me, or shoot myself, but I chose not to. And in that was my power based.

This was the first time I had a real reason to fire. I pulled the gun from inside my leather jacket without a thought, aimed at the walking dead's chest, studied his surroundings and what was behind him (I use the word "studied" here, but I did not spend excessive time on it as this word seems to imply), and fired. I pumped three of my six rounds into his chest, and he slumped to the floor with a small grunt of pain. I realized the moment he started to fall that I was in severe danger of arrest. Any moment the people would start screaming.

And then they did.

I thought it was because of me, but I realized when the dead grabbed my ankle that they were screaming for my life. It was in more immediate danger than I had realized.

The living dead gave my leg one hard tug before I could do anything, and I fell flat on my back, loosing air on impact. I was seeing stars and feeling unbelievably dizzy, like standing was not an option. I realized he was pulling me in closer.

I roared, swinging my revolver towards him and shooting him repeatedly in the forehead. A tiny part of my mind had time to congratulate me on my accuracy, and then I was pulling out of his grasp and struggling to my feet. I expected he was killed...I did not know at the time that to defeat one of the living dead they must be destroyed... I was going to move out for my own safety from the patrons in the restaurant, but then I realized he was struggling up again. I couldn't leave. Not without this monster. So I goaded him closer and closer to the emergency exit, and at last I threw open the door, causing a raging wail to whine through the building. He didn't like that. He moaned and covered his ears, but he kept pushing his way after me. I held the door for him, not certain he could make it out himself. As soon as he was out, however, I dropped the door and ran. He darted after me. He darted! This thing had speed I had not anticipated. I ran down the alleyway before looking down it, and realized it was a freaking dead end. I skidded, trying not to slip in the water puddles, whirling, his clutching grasp missing my jacket by inches, and ran towards the street. He loped after me. I could hear his heavy footfalls on the pavement, hear him moaning as he gave chase. It occurred to me that the only way to stop him would be to utterly destroy him, but how to utterly destroy him, I wasn't exactly sure. Perhaps if I blew him up...though how to achieve that was also uncertain.

I burst out onto Maple Street. Perhaps there had been a maple tree here once, but there certainly wasn't one now. This street was all glass, metal, and asphalt.

It suddenly occurred to me, as I darted to the left and ran down the sidewalk, between tables and people alike, that this monster might kill an innocent bystander, giving me up as a bad job and taking someone who hadn't yet realized their peril. I turned to look, and saw him barreling through the people I had just left, paying them no heed whatsoever and gaining on me as I slowed to watch him. I turned back to the front and slammed into a dark-skinned man wearing a long, black coat.

"Hey!" he exclaimed, and started to say something else, but I shouted, "Sorry!" and pushed myself to run faster. This monster seemed to be gaining speed every minute I let him run. I realized that what I needed most at this moment was Mikey.

I was pulling my cell phone from my pocket, dialing his number while dodging pedestrians and tables and dogs and poles and...wahh! wayward musicians trying to make a couple bucks off the passersby. I kicked his guitar case as I ran by. "Get out of the way!" I screamed at him.

He didn't seem pleased by my treatment of his tip bucket. "Hey! If you don't like the music, just say so, ass-hole."

I was tempted to argue, but then he saw the monster, nearly upon him, and scrambled to move his case out of the way of destruction.

Mikey answered his cell phone.

"Hey, what's up?"

He sounded bored and casual. Bored and casual! He was probably sitting at home playing VIDEOGAMES while I was trying not to die!

"Michael, I am running for my life!"

"What, cops catch you with a gun in your pocket?"

"No, there's this freakish thing..."

I could hear someone talking in the background, and I realized it was probably our friend Frank.

"Mike, let me talk to Frank."

"He's not here."

"Mikey!"

"All right," he groused, and while he presumably handed over the phone, I removed mine from my ear and dodged around a pole. The living dead slammed half his shoulder into it as he ran by, not bothering to compensate for my dodge. I put this to my best advantage possible, throwing myself through a maze of objects and people as fast as I could manage.

I returned the phone to my ear.

"Gerard?" Frank was asking.

"Frank! This is dead serious, I'm being chased by this thing..."

"Mikey said something about a thing..."

"I'm fucking serious, Frank! I don't think it's alive."

"Vampires? Gerard, what did you smoke today?"

"Frank, stop it! Where are you?"

"At my house, with Mikey." Then he seemed to focus. Something made him get serious. "What is this thing, exactly?"

"It's...like..." I was too busy throwing myself between a complex set of obstacles to answer. "It's like a zombie or something, it can barely walk..."

"It's chasing you, right?"

"Yeah, and I..."

"Use your gun."

"I have, every shot, he's not dead!"

"I thought you said he is dead?"

"Frank. If you were the one being chased by an unstoppable corpse, maybe you would understand my sense of urgency. All I want from you is one thing."

"What's that?" Frank asked, after pausing to think about it.

"Help me destroy it."

I could practically hear Frank's grin through my cell phone. I heard him start to speak, and then—

I shouted just before the collision. I was running through downtown and towards a small restaurant with flimsy tables packing their part of the sidewalk. It was into one of these tables that I crashed, rolling over the top and falling hard onto the concrete beyond. The table fell next to me, and people were screaming and chairs were flying and I could hear the monster moaning closer.

"Gerard! Gerard!" I could hear Frank shouting, but I threw the cell phone from my hands, kicking the table as hard as I could into the oncoming dead. It slammed him with as much force as a plastic table can slam something, which is worth basically nothing, but it stopped him for just a moment.

I scrambled to my feet and saw a man picking up and examining my cell phone, as though he wanted to use it to take a photo of the living dead chasing me. "That's mine!" I said, snatching it from his hand.

"Gerard!" Frank was screaming. I thought he sounded close to tears.

"Frank."

"Oh my god, don't do that to me! Where are you?"

"Downtown, on Maple Street. I'm almost to the square."

"I'll be there," he said resolutely, and I could hear the squeak of the springs in his and Mikey's crappy couch as he rose.

"Bring a flame thrower," I responded irritably, already running again, as I was already being pursued, again.

I wasn't sure a flame thrower was going to help. I knew Frank didn't have one, but he had Mikey with him. That kid could acquire basically anything.

I tore onto the square and startled the people gathered there. The crowd was denser; I wasn't certain if this was a good thing or a bad one. I could lose the monster more easily, but he might give me up as a target and kill someone else. Maybe I should just let him kill me and be done with it... But no, if he killed me, there would be no one to stop him from killing the others. I had to fight him.

I grabbed a lamp post on my way by to halt my headlong dash. I let momentum swing me back to face the direction from which I had come. The walking dead was struggling through a mass of people that didn't appear to have noticed it's grotesque appearance. Then I heard the first scream. Now they understood. I kept my eyes trained on the monster, hoping he was watching me. He was still pushing his way through the people, but turning his head, seeming to get distracted by them...

"Hey!" I screamed at him, leaping from behind the lamppost. "Hey! Leave them! It's me you want!"

His head turned in my direction. This is how I know living dead recognize human beings, because this one recognized me.

"It's me you want," I said again, more quietly, watching him as he approached slowly through the crowd. A few yards away now, I threw myself back into the running game, our mad running game. I was getting a stitch in my side. I had never liked running. In school, I had been forced into playing football for phys. ed. I hated it, and basically everyone there hated me. Running was not my game.

Amazing how your priorities change when your life is in danger.

I ran onto Maple Street on the opposite side from whence I'd come. I had to get away from all of these people, and find Frank.

That's when Frank found me. I knew it was Frank because of the tires, screeching.

Last year, Frank bought a magnificent, '77 Chevrolet Camaro. He was the only one that would dare travel at speed and skid their tires on the square. I looked back. Frank's car was stopped nearly in the center of the square, behind me. I could see Mikey in the passenger's seat, and Frank's hands tightly gripping the wheel. Directly in front of them, eyeing them unpleasantly, was the walking dead.

"Oh my god," I automatically said, and started running towards the car. The zombie's head turned my direction, and he started loping towards me, but he was too late, and I knew it. I threw myself through Mikey's open window. I felt terribly theatrical as I did so.

I pulled my legs inside, just as the monster was reaching for my ankles. Mikey screamed. So did Frank. He put his foot to the floor and with a crazed skidding of tires, we raced forward, Frank trying to avoid the innocent bystanders while cursing at them to get out of the way. I saw Mikey draw his gun from my awkward position on top of him. He fired five rounds into the monster as Frank threw us onto the wrong side of the road to avoid a mass of screaming pedestrians. The monster roared.

"Gerard, it won't die!" Mikey exclaimed, as though I could somehow do something about it.

"I'm aware of that," I groused, struggling to sit up straight, my legs currently in Mikey's lap, my head pressed against Frank's side. Frank unexpectedly slammed on the brakes and swerved to the left, throwing me into him, hard.

"Gerard, get off!" Frank warned, stepping on the clutch and the gas and the brake and the gas again. We were hardly moving, and, struggling upright, I saw why.

There was a cop facing us, apparently there to oversee whatever event had brought so many people to the square. He was now standing in the middle of Frank's intersection and pointing him to the side of the road.

"This is not good," Mikey was saying.

The cop was gesturing firmly over to the left, towards his squad car.

"What?" said Frank, feigning ignorance. "I don't understand you. Engine too loud." And then he heartlessly put the pedal to the floor, throwing Mikey and me across the car again as he swung hard to the right. I would have been in pain from slamming into Frank again, but my eyes were locked on the walking dead that we had nearly crashed into. It was fast. So fast.

"Gerard," Frank warned, and I felt his arm slam into the back of my head as he turned again. Horns were blaring at us and people were screaming, and behind us, I heard the sirens of the cop car.

"Options?" Frank asked, starting to sound frantic.

"We have to go back," I said.

"What? No! We'll be arrested, did you see that guy?"

"If we don't go back, that thing will kill those people! I've seen it, it can't be destroyed by conventional means, we need to stop it."

"With what, exactly?"

"We need to destroy it utterly. I don't know how, we just do."

"Blow it up?" suggested Mikey. He is my brother, and he thinks just like me.

"Burn it," said Frank, remembering what I said about the flame thrower. He threw us around another hard corner, to the left. He shot to the end of the block and skidded around the next corner. We were facing the square. I could see the walking dead.

"I don't suppose you did bring a flame thrower?" I asked, my eyes on the walking dead.

"No, sorry," Frank responded, slowing his speed as we drew closer.

Mikey was silent, and that concerned me. Then he spoke. "I know someone who does."

There was a long pause, during which Frank and I would have rolled our eyes at each other if we were in a reasonable position to do so. "In case you haven't noticed, Mikey, he's not with us now."

"No, but we could go to him. We could take it to him."

"How? Throw it in the trunk?"

Mikey was silent.

"Oh my god, he's a madman," said Frank, slamming on his brakes and throwing me yet again. I made a pledge then never to let him drive, ever again.

"It's all we've got, let's go," said Mikey, throwing open his door. I climbed slowly out after him, rubbing my nose.

Once again, the walking dead recognized me.

"Gerard, I think he recognizes you," Mikey said nervously as it started to lumber towards us.

"Thanks for noticing, Mike, you're so observant."

We ran to the side and Frank pulled his car between us and the monster, stopping just passed us. The trunk popped open.

"Okay. This is not going to be easy. Maybe if we just..."

Mikey was talking but I wasn't listening. The walking dead had come within two yards of us, and I darted to the side and threw myself against him. Mikey immediately shut up and ran to the trunk. He threw it open and with much wrestling, we managed to push the monster slightly closer, but he was grabbing me, pulling me, baring his rotting teeth in my face.

And then I saw those rotting teeth explode right before me. Mikey had shot him in the mouth, narrowly missing my mouth in the process. I would have words with that kid, if we made it out of this alive.

But the beast had been taken by surprise, and knocked off balance, just for a moment.

"Catch him!" Mikey was screaming, and I gave the walking dead a hard push; he became then the falling dead, then the fallen dead, and immediately after, the caged dead. Ensnared, trapped, confined. Mikey sat down on the trunk, looking shaken. He was still holding his gun. I snatched it from him. "Get in the car," I said, putting his gun in my inside pocket. "And tell us how to find this friend with the flame thrower."

"Stop! Step away from the car and put your hands up! Drop the gun on the ground!"

"Damn it," I muttered.

"Run, Gerard!" Mikey shouted, leaping from the trunk. We raced around the side of the car, the police man shouting at us. I threw myself into the car, Mikey close behind me.

Frank was driving before Mikey's door was shut. I twisted to look out the back, and saw the cop lowering a gun and running towards his squad car. Which one was his was hard to say, as he had been joined by a whole squadron.

"Hey, Mikey, maybe you better call this friend of yours and tell him we're bringing him a zombie to torch with his flame thrower," Frank said sarcastically as we screeched through another intersection.

"I don't know his phone number!" Mikey protested. "We're not really friends, I just happen to know him!"

"Great. Do you even know where he lives?"

"Yeah, I can get you to his house. Turn right."

I suppose I should respect Frank for his reflexes. I probably would have asked, "What, now?" and missed the turn entirely.

Behind us, I heard the sirens start to wail.

"Oh my god, they're going to cut us off!" Mikey said. He was starting to hyperventilate. Typical Mikey.

The walking dead we threw in the trunk? It wanted out. I could hear it banging against the metal of Frankie's car. I looked back and police lights glared into my eyes. They were going to catch us. We had to dodge other vehicles and pedestrians, but everyone got out of the way of the police.

I knew if they caught us, this was not going to help, but I realized we had no other choice. I drew Mikey's gun out of my jacket.

"Gerard?" Mikey said, staring through his glasses at his nine-millimeter.

"Move," I commanded, sliding across the seat to make my point. We changed positions, Mikey climbing under me. As soon as he was sitting next to Frank, he caught Frank's arm in an iron grip. "Frank? What's he doing? Frank!"

I cocked the gun and leaned out of the window. I had never done this before; it felt dramatic and powerful. Better than just carrying a gun. Now I was opening fire on the cops.

I saw the officer's expression collapse into one of fear just before I fired, aiming for the other side of his windshield. The glass exploded into a million jagged crystals, and I saw the cop dropping below the wheel, trying to protect his head and drive at the same time.

Fortunately for us, he failed dramatically. His car swerved slightly too far to his right, in front of another cop car that had been swerving to avoid my bullets, thinking I was aiming for him. The cars collided and sent the shattered one into a death spin. The third cop swerved onto the sidewalk to avoid the wreckage; people screamed.

It was then that I realized so was Mikey.

"Gerard! They're going to put us in prison! You know what they do to guys like us in prison!"

"That's why we can never let them take us alive," I responded, pulling myself back into the car. "Frank, d..."

Mikey screamed again. He screamed like a girl when he was terrified. Frank slammed on the brakes hard, two cop cars swerving into our path from opposite sides of the intersection.

"Damn it!" Frank swore, trying to maneuver around them. He started to shift into reverse.

Mikey caught his arm. "Don't, there's one behind us."

Frank's expression became resigned and...determined. He shifted back into first.

Never let them take you alive. My own words echoed in my head and I wondered how serious they actually were.

Frank put his foot down.

We shot forward; people screamed, the police looked frantic, as we smashed through their barrier. Perhaps if we had been in a modern Chevrolet Camaro, we wouldn't have made it, but in this older model, this larger and heavier model, we were the stronger. I looked back at the police through the window and saw their cars just now coming to a stop, front ends dented dramatically.

Mikey guided us across town to a drab suburban area. We hadn't seen any cop cars or heard sirens for some time, but we knew they were still searching for us. The chances of them finding us were enormous; it wasn't as though we were inconspicuous.

"That one," Mikey said, pointing to a house on the left. "Right there." Frank slowly pulled into the driveway, which was fractured with grass growing between the cracks. The house itself was drab, some sort of ornamental grass growing taller than the porch next to the front steps. It gave the house a wild appearance, as though it was in the middle of a jungle, not the middle of a city.

"Okay," said Mikey, pushing at me to let him out. "I'll go up and explain."

"Hope he doesn't use his flame thrower on you," Frank offered.

"Be quick," I told Mikey, and he nodded, climbing over me and out of the car.

He hurried up the stone steps to the doorway, but the door opened before he could reach it. A man stood waiting there, looking expectant. He wore black clothes under a white lab coat (what is he, some mad scientist? I thought), but his most memorable feature was his hair, which he kept in a massive, red afro.

Mikey was talking rapidly, though we couldn't make out what he said. He gestured several times back at the car and a look of growing comprehension grew on the red-haired man's face. "Mr. Way?" we heard him ask, extending his hand to Mikey.

Mikey nodded and agreed, and the man quickly shook his hand before descending the steps passed him. "Come, you can put your car in my garage," he said, coming toward us. He came closer to Frank's window. "Back out for a minute and I'll give you the garage. How close do you think the police are?"

"Too close," I responded.

He grimaced and Frank pulled us backwards while the man jogged toward the door. "Keys in the house," he explained to Mikey.

Several minutes later I was standing in the man's garage, watching as he pulled closed the broken automatic door. It slammed closed, blocking out all sunlight. Mikey flipped on the garage light.

The man looked at us for a moment, and said, "So. You have a zombie?"

"Sort of," I said.

"How do I know I'm not about to murder a human being?"

"You'll know he's not human when you see him," I promised.

"So, where is he, exactly...?"

It was at that precise moment that the walking dead chose to smash his fists into the trunk and scream for his release.

"In there," I said unnecessarily.

The man rubbed at his chin. "Mr. Way says you shot it?"

"He probably has at least eleven bullets buried in his skull," I agreed.

"So to kill him you must destroy him?"

"Considering that he's no longer alive," I said.

The man rubbed his chin for a moment, then said, "So you want use of my flame thrower? Considering the only other option would be to use explosives...and I do not want to blow up my garage..." He glanced at Mikey, and then said, "Flames it is."

In moments he had left the garage and returned carrying a heavy-looking flame thrower. "So. How should we do this?"

"Which part of your garage do you care about the least?" was Mikey's response.

"Over there, by the broken door," the man gestured.

"If we open the trunk..." I said.

"So long as he's away from my car!" added Frank.

"Gerard should stand against the garage door," Mikey said.

"What!"

"It went after you when it could have gone after me, so it obviously prefers you."

"Nice. Just what I always wanted."

"Right. Gerard, stand by the door," the man commanded. "You two open the trunk, and I will incinerate him. You should run," he added to me, "as soon as I fire."

"No problem," I responded.

Frank leaned in his open car door and prepared to pop the trunk. "When you're ready, Mikey."

"Your respect for my opinion is so kind," I said sarcastically.

"Thank you."

"Ready, Frank," said Mikey, standing near the right side of the trunk.

"All right. On three, I'm pushing the button. One. Two. Three." He said it so calmly it was unnerving. He should be a psychiatrist or something. I felt completely comfortable standing there waiting for a zombie to leap out of the trunk of my friend's car and try to devour my brains. I watched as the trunk popped and eased open before Mikey could lift it, the walking dead's eyes already locked on me. He moaned in recognition.

"Hey, he still recognizes you!" Mikey said cheerily.

"Mike. Shut the fuck up."

The man with the red afro nodded in agreement. I hadn't realized he had gotten closer until I saw him nod, standing right beside Mikey, leveling the flame thrower in my direction.

"I would run now if I were you," he said, and pulled the trigger on his flame thrower.

I ran, but I still had time to pause and watch. It isn't every day you get to see a zombie being consumed in flames fired by a man with a giant red afro. I also decided, as I watched, that I wanted a flame-thrower.

The walking dead, for the first time since leaving the trunk, since being thrown into it, since...I couldn't remember when...took his eyes off of me and stared at the man behind the flame-thrower. He stared for only a moment before he screamed. He was blazing. The man put out his flame-thrower and just watched. The walking dead was roaring and thrashing around, fire leaping from his blazing arms, consuming his scraggly hair. Eating his eyes from their sockets.

"Let him outside, he's going to ruin my garage!" the man shouted as the flames leaped nearly to the ceiling.

"And my car!" Frank shouted, and the red-haired man and I ran to the garage door, forcing it upwards. Frank charged the dead with a scream and slammed him hard in the chest with his shoulder, shunting him outside. Frank drew back with his shirt on fire, slapping at his shoulder. Mikey smacked the flames from existence.

We turned back to the walking dead, and saw that it was walking no more. It had collapsed on the concrete drive, and was dissolving rapidly; in seconds, all that remained of his presence was an ominous black stain on the driveway.

Mikey and I glanced at each other. "We weren't here," he said.

"This never happened," I agreed.

"You didn't see us!" we both shouted in the general direction of the neighbors, and together we pulled the garage door shut.

The man with the afro was pulling off his flame-thrower backpack. He set it on the trunk of Frank's car. "Well, this has easily been the strangest day of my life," he said.

"Same here," agreed Frank.

The man offered his hand. "Ray Toro."

"Frank Iero."

"And you?" he asked, extending his hand my way.

"Gerard Way," I said. "Mikey's brother."

Ray smiled slightly. "Pleasure killing strange dead creatures with you."

"And the same to you," I agreed.

He dropped my hand and looked around at us. "Normally I would kick you out now, but instead I'm going to hold you hostage. Explain where that thing came from, and how you found it, and why it was chasing you. And how the hell did you catch it?"

We began to explain, telling him about my encounter in the restaurant and the ensuing chase scene. Toro mentioned that he had seen men like the walking dead before. He had just assumed they were normal people...well, not normal, but at least completely human. And alive.

Knowing that there were more of the dead out there concerned me. I felt something rising in me until suddenly I spoke. "We have to kill them."

They had been talking, about what, I have no idea, but they all stopped and stared at me. "Kill what, Gerard?"

"The dead. We have to destroy them."

They looked confused. How could they not understand? "We're the only ones that know about this, right? We've got to..."

"Gee, the police probably know about this, they probably keep tabs on them or something..." Mikey was saying.

"But they're not doing anything!" I exclaimed, rising and slamming my fist onto the table. "If they know, they're doing nothing. This is our task. We can stop them." I was calming slowly, sitting back down at Toro's table. "We can find them. Capture them somehow, and destroy them."

Mikey was giving me a concerned look, but Frank said, "You're right, Gee. We should do this."

"We can?" Mikey asked.

"We could, potentially," Toro was saying, looking, I thought, like an absolute mad scientist in his white coat and his wild hair, leaning forward across the table as he explained our weapons strategies. "Concealed weapons. Incendiary rounds. We could experiment, find out their weaknesses and if there are other ways of killing them..."

Thus began our first ever meeting of My Chemical Romance. We chose the name because of Mikey's statement, "If we told someone about this, they would think we were high on something."

We parted with an agreement to stay in touch and to scout each day for at least an hour each, searching the streets and the establishments of the city for the living dead.

**There it is. Chapitre une. What do you think? I wrote this back in the summer, so I still have material I need to upload. Best get back to work. Stay loud, Killjoys!**

**xoxo,**

**Rebel Rose**


	2. We Try to Get Arrested

**"Everyone expects you to behave like a kid so you might as well do it. Go throw your TV out of a hotel window." ~ Gerard Way**

WE TRY TO GET ARRESTED

It took us three days to find our first. Frank had come over to my house to defeat his boredom while Mikey was at work, and we decided to search the streets for living dead. We had just entered downtown when we saw him.

He was being arrested.

"Damn it, Gee, we can't let this happen!" Frank exclaimed.

"What?" I said, automatically grabbing the back of his jacket to keep him from running towards the cops. Frank sometimes did crazy things without thinking.

"He'll kill everyone in the prison!"

He was right, I knew he was. We had to do something. The walking dead was already being pushed into the cop car, screaming and roaring at the cops. How could they think this was a normal person?

"How can we get to him..." I said quietly, thinking out loud. "We could...follow the car...maybe we can shoot him before they...or..."

"We could get arrested."

I turned to Frank. This idea was so bad it was actually good.

We waited until sundown. Toro and Mikey demanded it, as that was the soonest Toro could reach us, and when Mikey got off work. We headed towards the nicer part of town, sky scrapers glaring down at us from the heights. I called my friend Matt on the way over. He was perhaps the only friend I had that would believe me when I said the dead were walking.

Not immediately, though.

"Gerard, what did you smoke today?"

"Matt, I'm serious."

He agreed to be our gunman. He would meet us outside the compound our first day out, and throw us a gun over the fence before anyone could stop him. And before anyone could stop us, we would shoot the walking dead with incendiary rounds. Toro had made the calls to acquire those rounds today. He had served a short stint with the military, and thus he could procure such black market things as these.

That night we met in the parking lot of a major corporation, and stood in the lamplight, scheming.

"Okay, how should we do this?" Mikey was asking. "What's the best way to get arrested?"

"Punch a cop?" Matt suggested.

"Okay, I'll punch a cop...no, man, what if he hits back! I don't wanna get hurt!" Mikey exclaimed. "Gerard can punch a cop!"

"Mikey."

"Or I could punch you, doesn't matter."

"We could...I don't know...we could race through the city like madmen in my car," Frank suggested.

"Or we could car-jack," I said.

Frank's eyes wandered around the parking lot. "I like that. Come on, Gerard."

"Have you ever car-jacked before?" I whispered to him as we slipped between parked vehicles.

"No...not really...but the idea isn't to steal the car, right, it's to get caught trying to steal it."

"Right." That was when I saw that Frank was making his way towards a shining yellow Camaro, a newer, nicer version of his car, which was still hidden in Toro's garage. "Frank! That car?"

"Yeah, if we're going to pretend to steal a car, it might as well be an awesome one."

He stood next to the driver's window, putting his hands against the glass. "Oh man, this is sweet..."

"So, how will you..."

Frank drew a knife from his belt. "The idea is to get the door to unlock from the outside," he said, sliding the blade into the gap between the door frame and the window. "Sort of...like..."

Frank twisted the knife between the window and the door-frame, pretending to try to unlock the door. We were being as obvious as possible, Frank making no effort whatsoever to hide as I circled the car, pretending to watch for the police.

I heard as much as felt when Frank suddenly stopped moving. "Oh my god."

"What, have they found us..?"

"No, the door just unlocked!"

"No way."

"Yes way. Check this out!"

I think Frank's ecstasy was definitely more than necessary.

He pulled the car door open as I stepped around the front with some sarcasm.

"Oh my god, this is so sweet! Check this out, dude..." He had climbed into the leather interior. I heard the passenger door unlock and climbed in next to him. Frank looked at me. I looked at Frank.

"As long as we have it..." I started to say.

"We should race it. Gimme the keys...oh crap. No keys."

I grabbed my cell phone/walkie and called to Toro. "Hey, Toro? You know how to hot-wire a car?"

"Yes. Where are you? And why?"

He was down in the parking lot moments later. "Move your leg," he said to Frank, crouching beside his open door and detaching the panel under the steering wheel. "What exactly are you planning on doing?" he asked as he fumbled with wires we could not see.

"We're going to race this car downtown. We'll get arrested for speeding and outrageous conduct," said Frank, still sounding over-enthusiastic.

Toro looked intrigued, like he wanted to come along. The car suddenly roared to life.

"Get in," I said to him. "And don't tell Mikey. He'll be so mad."

"Oh yeah, he's going to kill us for not taking him," Frank agreed, shifting gears.

Toro slid into the back seat.

Mikey called my walkie. "Hey guys, you get arrested yet?"

"Working on it," I responded.

Mikey was waiting on the roof of one of the lower buildings flanking the road. Across from him on another rooftop was Matt.

"Where are you?" Mikey asked.

"Frank tried to car-jack a Camaro."

"Sounds sweet, how's it working?"

"It already has."

"What?"

Just then, Mikey heard a loud, racing engine roaring above the other cars on the street below, and looking down, he saw a yellow Camaro dodging through traffic, heading downtown.

Mikey's response in my walkie was a frustrated scream. "Gerard! I wanna do that!"

"Meet us downtown. Maybe you'll get arrested, too."

There was a flaw in our plan for arrest. About the racing madly through the streets. It's kind of difficult to do when you're trapped in gridlock.

"This is not going as I had anticipated," Frank objected, banging his head repeatedly against the wheel. The police had seen us and had begun pursuit, but their car was many vehicles behind us in traffic. Also, there was another problem. They were Essex County police.

"We can't let them arrest us," I had said. "The walking dead is in the Applegate County jail, I saw them. We can't go to Essex County."

"Agreed," said Frank unnecessarily.

The police sirens began to whine.

"I've got an idea," Toro said, leaning in from the back seat. "You guys get out, both of you, and find Mikey. I can get out of traffic. If we're fortunate, the cops won't realize I'm here and follow and arrest you."

Frank and I thought about it in silence for a moment. Then simultaneously we reached for our doors.

Toro climbed up from the back seat as Frank and I got out, drivers in adjacent vehicles yelling at us for leaving our vehicle. "Good luck," Frank told him.

"You too," Toro responded.

Frank and I ran, dodging between vehicles and towards an alley where I could see Mikey, just outside of the light.

Matt was waiting there with him when we arrived.

"You don't look arrested," Mikey commented.

"It's harder than it sounds," Frank complained, resting his hands on his knees.

"Okay. I have an idea. Why doesn't Gerard stand in the middle of the street and scream really loudly. In his underwear!"

"Mikey, why don't you stand in the middle of the street and scream in your underwear?" I snapped.

"We could..." Frank started to say, but he paused. His eyes rested on Mikey. "Mikey, go away, I don't want you to hear this."

"Nice, Frank. So nice." He kept complaining as Frank stood next to me and whispered.

"This may sound really weird, so don't freak out, okay, but you and I could do something really outrageous. We could, like, make out in the middle of the street, or something."

I turned slowly towards him. "Really?"

Frank shrugged. "As a last resort."

"What? What as a last resort?"

"You don't need to know this, Mikey," I said, walking away from him down the street.

Mikey hurried after, nagging as only Mikey could. "Come on, what? I wanna know! Tell me, Gerard! Look, whatever it is, I swear I'll do it with you, so long as you tell me!"

I had to stare at him. Frankie almost laughed. The idea of kissing Frank is strange, but slightly intriguing. The idea of kissing Mikey is disgusting. He's my brother. "No you wouldn't," I decided, beginning to walk again.

"No, come on, seriously!"

"Mikey, lay off," Frank said, purposely walking closer to me to prevent Mikey from stopping us.

Mikey sighed and kicked at the sidewalk. "We could break a window," he suggested, unexpectedly breaking off his assault. I grabbed at the opportunity.

"Vandalism. Great, Mikey. We could ruin someone else's life just so we can get arrested. I love it."

Mikey reached out and caught my shoulder, pulling me back and turning me to face a building just across the street. "See that bar over there? That bar happens to be owned by the members of your least favorite football team."

My teeth clenched and breath quickened at the mere thought of our high school football team.

"They still owe us," Mikey said. "I'm breaking their window."

"No, I'll break the window," I said quickly, searching the ground for a rock large enough to do some damage.

"I'll..."

"Mikey, I'll throw you through the window if I have to, I am breaking that window."

"Fine, I'll get arrested for _breaking_ the window and you'll get arrested for murdering me."

My fingers closed on the perfect rock. I drew back my arm and threw it with all my strength to the window across the street.

It shattered with a fountainous crash into a million glittering fragments. People on the sidewalk screamed. They started to turn, looking for the vandal.

Mikey pointed heartlessly at me. "He did it!"

"What... No I did not, he did it!"

"He did it! He threatened to throw me through the window, he's a mass murderer and a madman! He..."

A police officer suddenly came into view, hurrying towards the broken window and the frantic crowd across the street. "Calm down, somebody tell me who did this!"

"One of them," I heard a girl say. "But I have no idea which one."

"Oh my god, Mikey, that cop is from Essex, we can't get arrested by him!"

"Dang it!" Mikey exclaimed, and we slipped away from the scene as quietly as we could.

I realized then where we were. I had been to this part of town before. With a friend. "Mikey, I know what we need."

"What," Mikey asked, sounding unimpressed and put off by our lack of skill at crime.

"We need Bert."

"What?"

"Bert McCracken, he lives nearby. On this street, even."

"Oh no. No, no, Gerard, don't find him now, he's probably drunk, he'll probably slit your throat and tear you into a hundred pieces and then burn the pieces in his barbecue pit!" Mikey protested as he hurried after me down the street. The street we entered was dark and narrow, cold. The houses were dingy and weather-stained, but as if in direct contradiction, they seemed to shine with an unnatural luminescence in the darkness. A chill wind blew against us that had not touched the lighter part of town. Bert's house was halfway down the street. One of the shutters on his upper window was hanging from one hinge.

"I know how he broke that shutter. He hung someone out of that window, I know he did it, he's probably high, and he'll probably..."

"Mikes, give me your phone."

Mikey handed it over without slowing his rant. I drew back my arm and threw the phone at Bert's window.

"Hey!"

A few seconds went by, and then I saw the curtains draw back and the window slid up. Bert's silhouette stood over us, and his voice, cracked and weary, shouted down to us, "Hey, you better get the hell away from my house or I swear to God I'll c... Oh! Gerard Way! Hey man, what you doing here? Hang on, I'll be right down."

A few moments later, Bert stepped out of his house. He was dressed, but his clothes had a rumpled look, as though he had been sleeping in them. Trust me, I know what that's like. His eyes were tired to match his voice, but he was intrigued. "Hey, man, what brought you here? Come on inside. Hey, Mikey."

"Hey," Mikey said, staying back from Bert as though the horror of his house were contagious.

Bert put his arm around my shoulders and started to pull me inside. Not exactly what I wanted. "No, Bert, I need your help, I can't stay."

"Oh, all right, what's it gonna be?"

Mikey leaned next to my ear and whispered, "He's high."

I slammed my elbow into his ribs, and as he backed off, swearing, I said, "I need you to tell me how to get arrested."

Bert was silent for a moment, gazing at me, like he was trying to gauge me or something, and then suddenly he put his arm around my shoulders with more force than before and began to drag me towards his house. "Gerard, I don't know what you've been smoking but you're messed up, you have no idea. Trust me, man, you don't wanna go to prison, and I am helping you, man, I'm going to take you upstairs and lock you in a dark room until this wears off, okay?"

"Bert, get off, I don't..."

"Get serious, man!"

"I am serious! I need to go to prison."

Bert stopped trying to drag me and stared instead. "Why?"

"Because, I..." I couldn't tell him. He wouldn't believe me, if I told him it would confirm his suspicions that I was high. "I can't tell you why."

"What? Can't tell your best friend, come on, Gerard. What is it?"

I watched him. He was really serious. I stepped closer to him, not wanting anyone else to hear, not counting Mikey. "The dead are walking."

"Okay, Gerard, what are you on, seriously, this is a little..."

"I am serious, Bert! Shut up and listen. I've seen them, they're dead..."

"You mean like zombies?"

"Yeah, seriously, I, I saw one in a restaurant the other day, okay, and it was walking but it wasn't alive, and I shot it, but..."

"Whoa, whoa, you had a gun?"

"Yes, and I shot it, but it wouldn't die!"

"I thought you said it was already dead?"

"It is, it was, but you can't kill it, you can't destroy it, not by conventional means. So we caught it, we burned it, but there are more of them out there, and we've pledged to destroy them. So the one we're chasing got arrested."

Comprehension dawned in Bert's eyes.

"So now I need to go to prison, so I can find the walking dead, and destroy it."

Bert was silent for a moment. Then he laughed a little. "Gerard, that is really messed up. Oh my god. Yeah, I'll totally help you. Come on, let's walk, I'll tell you how to get arrested."

Mikey sidled up to me as we started walking, leaning close and whispering pointedly, "He's drunk!"

I pushed him away and asked Bert how he got arrested.

"I've been arrested three and a half times."

"How can you get arrested half a time?" Mikey demanded, but I pushed him away again.

"Two times, I was drunk. So the way you should do this is go to a bar, and get really, totally, blind drunk, and then you can go out in the street and start screaming and doing a whole bunch of crazy stuff..."

"Bert, I need to be aware when they arrest me."

"Oh, okay, you wanna be aware, that's all right, not drunk, then. The third time I got arrested...well, okay, I was drunk that time, too. Okay, the half time I got arrested..."

"How, in the name of hell, can you possibly get arrested half a time?" Mikey demanded again, standing next to Bert this time.

"I nearly got arrested, okay, it was only from my own genius that I escaped!" Bert paused and looked at me, then turned back to Mikey. "Mikes, go away."

"Nice. Why?"

"You don't need to hear this."

"What? Why won't anyone let me hear anything?" Mikey complained as Bert pulled me closer than necessary and whispered rapidly about how he and his friends had an outrageously loud party in his dilapidated house, and how he hung one of his friends upside down out of the window. His house was on the police's list of routine checks for criminals now.

"So, if you wanna get arrested, we'll go back to my house and I can hang you out of a window..."

"I'm the one who needs to be arrested, Bert, why don't I hang you out of the window?"

"No, man, they tried to arrest the hanger and the hanged, it was crazy."

We had entered downtown again. I was going to talk to Frank, but Frank wasn't there. Neither was Toro, or Matt, and neither was our car.

"Mikey, wait," I said, holding out my arm as my brother drew nearer. "Frank's gone."

"What? Where's the car?"

"You guys brought a car?" Bert interjected.

I was calling Frank. "Frank? It's Gee, where are you?"

No response.

"Frank? Frankie, it's Gee, say something!"

My heart beating fast, I called Toro instead. "Toro? Toro, talk to me."

"Hey, Gerard."

Somehow I had not expected him to answer. "Toro, where are you? And where's Frank?"

"He's with me. We were having a dispute about his car and my garage."

I rolled my eyes, but Toro was still talking. "We were discussing his car and this new one you guys stole, and how they're both wanted vehicles. So Frank's going to drive his, and I'm taking this one, and we are going downtown to cause as much havoc as possible. Both in cars the police are searching for."

This was so brilliant that I couldn't speak for several moments. "Tell Frank to meet me, I want in."

"What? What's happening?" Mikey was asking.

"They're at Toro's house, getting Frank's car. They're about to wreak havoc on downtown."

"Sweet! I wanna drive the new Camaro."

"You can fight Toro for it, maybe he'll be nice and let you have it."

"Hey, I can get you arrested before he gets here," Bert said, pushing passed me and walking across the street.

Mikey sidled up to me. "He's high," he informed me, again.

"Shut up, Mikes."

Bert crossed the street with the swagger of a drunk and banged on the door of the nearest club. When the door was answered, he started shouting as loud as he could, his voice slurred so convincingly that I suspected Mikey might actually be right.

"You're drunk, sir, you don't need to be in here..." we heard the doorman suggest.

"I am not drunk! This is my calm voice! Don't you mess with me!"

"Sir..."

"I don't even drink beer! I am a non-alcoholic!"

"The man's an idiot," Mikey groaned.

"Then maybe you should consider decaf?" the doorman suggested sarcastically.

"I DON'T DRINK COFFEE!" Bert exclaimed.

"That is the biggest lie I have ever heard in my life," I said.

"Look, sir, I'm calling the cops..."

I realized I couldn't let Bert be the only one yelling. I wanted to be arrested, too.

"Hey!" I shouted, sprinting towards the bar. "Hey, don't mess with him, that's my friend."

"You know this loser?" the doorman asked, pointing at Bert.

"Yes, I do," I said, reaching Bert and grasping his arm.

Someone had just brought the bar's phone to the doorman. "Yeah, you better take your friend and run far away from here, I'm calling the cops on both of you."

This was exactly what we wanted. We thought arrest would be only a few short minutes of waiting in Frank's car (Frank had just arrived) for the cops to get there and arrest us.

Fifteen minutes went by completely uneventfully.

"This. Is. In-Sane," Frank said, banging his head repeatedly against the wheel of his car. "Why is it so hard to get arrested in this town?"

A thought came to my mind and I tried to push it away. I knew what we might have to do.

Frank seemed to be thinking the same. He turned to me, looking over Bert to my face. "We could do it."

I nodded slowly, while Bert looked back and forth between us with an intrigued expression on his face. "What? Could do what? You guys have a back-up plan or something?"

I shrugged. "Sort of. But not while you're watching."

Frank was taking the keys out of his car and starting to climb out. I followed him, and Bert followed me.

"Hey, come on, man, what is it?"

"Hey, it's a last resort, we probably won't try it anyway."

"Yeah, that's true, I've still got ideas. You could, like, let me beat you up or something..."

"I don't think so," I said.

"Or you could, like, do something really gay and like let me kiss you in the middle of the street or something."

Frank carefully avoided my eyes. I almost laughed.

"Shut up, Bert. You should get back to your house."

"Yeah, you know, you're actually right. I don't wanna be arrested. This is your party. I'll see you later, man."

"Yeah, all right."

Bert was gone in moments, swallowed by the darkness between his street and the lights of the square. I didn't want to, but slowly I turned to Frank. "Where do you wanna do this?"

"The middle of the street. I think he's right. We can stand right in front of the stoplights."

"Right, and be in everybody's way," I said, following him towards the crosswalk.

We stepped out across the wide, white bars. There were no cars waiting to cross yet, but I could see them coming, their headlights glaring into my eyes. Frank turned to face me. The lights shone against one side of his face, leaving the other in relative darkness. "So... How should we do this..."

"Just...stand there. Okay."

"You ever done this before?"

"No, never."

"But with girls, right?"

"Yeah. This is going to be completely the same. Only...completely different."

"Yeah. Yeah, okay, if you...yeah, just...I'll..."

Our eyes met, and Frank stepped closer to me. Horns were blaring at us, headlights glaring against us. Drivers were screaming, people were watching. Frank put his hands on my jacket.

And then we heard screaming. Not fearful screaming. Angry, I thought, and...

Frank was staring over my shoulder. "There's a mob right behind you," he informed me.

"Bert?"

"Definitely."

I sighed, and then we both turned and ran for Frank's car.

Bert has a million friends. In the course of maybe five minutes, he had gathered at least twenty, closer to thirty, and they had charged onto the square to cause the biggest riot and most mayhem possible. Some of them had brought paint ball guns. Mikey was pissed. "Bert McCracken," he said, "is totally and completely high."

"Why don't you take his gun and shoot him with it?" Frank suggested as we climbed the hill towards him.

"That's not a bad idea," Mikey responded, and then he was gone, running towards an oblivious Bert McCracken, who held a paint-ball gun in each hand and was laughing maniacally.

I heard sirens. "Genius Bert. He's going to get us arrested."

Frank had stopped moving. "By the Essex County police," he said.

He was right. All of the police cars racing through downtown were from Essex County. This was not fair.

"Bert, we can't be arrested by them, those are cops from Essex County!" I shouted to him.

"What?" Bert asked, turning my way. I had unwittingly provided the perfect distraction for Mikey, who snatched one of Bert's guns away and when Bert turned to look at him, shot him several times in the chest.

"Hey!" he shouted, too pained to realize he still held a gun he could shoot Mikey with.

The sirens whined nearer. Bert turned to look back at the police cars, now streaming through the stoplight where Frank and I had almost made out. "Come on," Bert said, running towards me and pushing me as he went by. "We can hide at my place."

I agreed without argument. Bert was calling to his troops. "Fall back, guys! My place!"

"Your house is worse on the inside," Mikey informed Bert when we entered at the head of Bert's paint-ball crazy mob. All of these people completely packed the house, all of them talking, laughing, lighting their cigarettes. Someone's...Bob Bryar, I remembered his name was...paint-ball gun went off, and pink and yellow splotches spattered across Bert's living room wall. It was definitely an improvement to the place.

"All right, you guys, not all of you have to stay, so if you're desperate, you can sleep on the floor. Ways, Frankie, dude with the Afro..."

"My name is Toro."

"You guys can have the couches and the guest room upstairs. Gerard can stay in my room, with me."

"Oooo..."

"Gayness!"

"That's creepy, man!" exclaimed everyone close enough to have heard what Bert said.

"And the rest of you freaks need to get out before the cops investigate me for having too many people in my house."

The guys were disappointed. I think they were expecting a party. Slowly, they left, still in wild spirits and carrying their paint-ball guns. Bob Bryar's accidentally spattered the other wall on his way out. I wondered how much paint-ball graffiti would mark the city in the morning.

"Hey, thanks, man," I said, turning to Bert as the door closed behind the last man.

"Not a problem. I want everyone in bed and lights out, I don't wanna get arrested for looking suspicious. Come on, who wants the guest room? Mikes? Let's go."

Leaving Frank and Toro to the twin sofas, we climbed the creaking, sagging staircase to the second floor.

"My room," said Bert, gesturing carelessly to a door on the left. We passed down the hall to another door, which he swung open for Mikey. It was the room with the broken shutter outside the window. "Guest room. If the lights don't work, bang on the wall, and they will."

Mikey was not thrilled. "Don't let him feel you up while you're sleeping, Gerard," he warned me as he stepped into the dusty guest bedroom.

Bert just grinned. I turned away from Mikey's closed door and crossed back down the hallway. Bert's door was hanging half-open. I pushed it open the rest of the way and stepped inside. The room was a wreck. Clothes lay on the floor; the doors to his dresser were open; a mirror over a small desk reflected an erroneous image on it's fractured surface. The bed was near the window, the bedclothes in disarray. I crossed to that window, not wanting the conversation that I knew would begin when I looked at Bert.

"Sort of a mess," he said behind me, as I heard the door shut. "But you can't tell in the dark."

"Mm," I said noncommittally, listening to his footsteps as he came towards me in the dark. I heard the creak of his bed springs as he threw himself down with a comfortable sigh. He probably expected me to tackle him. We have played games before, but I honestly didn't feel like them tonight. I turned towards the bed, but saw a light out of the corner of my eye, and looked back towards the window. A solitary cop car was turning onto our street, passing slowly by the houses. Probably searching for us.

"What's that?" Bert asked, somehow sensing that this car was more than normal.

"Cop car. But it can't know we're here."

It stopped in front of Bert's house.

"Oh, crap," Bert said, looking over my shoulder at the cop car.

My heart stopped beating. I remembered. His house was on the routine inspection list after a crime is committed. He had told us himself.

The Applegate County police broke in the front door. In moments, I was in handcuffs. A prison van was called, and, unbelievably, we were being carted off to prison.

_**They all cheat at cards**_

_**And the checkers are lost,**_

_**My cell mate's a killer,**_

_**They make me do push-ups in drag!**_

_**Oh, but nobody cares if you're losing yourself**_

_**AM I LOSING MYSELF?**_

_**I MISS MY MOM,**_

_**WILL THEY GIVE ME THE CHAIR,**_

_**OR LETHAL INJECTION**_

_**OR SWING FROM A ROPE IF YOU DARE?**_

_**BUT NOBODY KNOWS ALL THE TROUBLE I'VE SEEN!**_

**Yay, I like this chapter. I was inspired to write this after I read a short story called The Cop and the Anthem, by O. Henry. If you haven't read that, go read it, it's good. It's about a homeless guy who tries to get arrested so he can spend the winter months on a tropical island doing public work with other prisoners. The keyword here is _tries_. :)**

**Boots tight, gun close, mask on. Love ya, Killjoys!**

**xoxo,**

**Rebel Rose**


	3. We Spend the Night in Jail

**Hey, guys. Much thanks to my one reviewer, elliesweets :) For elliesweets, and anyone else who was bothered by Mikey being overly-babyish: I apologize for writing him that way. I wrote this several months ago. At some point during the writing I watched a lot of videos with Mikey in them, and I realized he's not the whiney little brother I always imagined (sorry, Mikey!), but that he's actually really awesome. So I apologize for writing him that way in the beginning. He changes. Not in this chapter :P But he does change later.**

WE SPEND THE NIGHT IN JAIL

We were searched thoroughly. They took my jacket and made me take off my shoes. A policewoman reached into all of my pockets, confiscating the only thing I had, my cell phone. I was pushed into the grasp of a tall policeman that gave me a look clearly stating he would take no shit from me. I turned back to the policewoman, who was now searching Frank, her eyes down, focused on her job.

Several guards led us into the men's portion of the prison. Some of the inmates watched us as we passed, their eyes dark and haunting; others didn't move at all.

The officer with the keys moved to the left and began unlocking one of the cell doors. A single prisoner sat against the back wall, looking up at us with misery in his eyes. The officer gestured Toro into the cell, and without objection, he went. The door was locked and we moved on.

Several yards down, the officer opened another cell on the left, this one completely empty. He gestured to me, and then to Frank. Mikey started to follow us, but the officer, still silent, held out his hand and sternly shook his head. The cell opposite mine was unlocked. In the darkness within, I could see two men, one sitting on a lower bunk, looking bored and exasperated as the other prisoner stood against the back wall, practicing some sort of martial arts in the narrow space provided. Mikey did not look pleased. "Get in," the up-till-now silent officer said, giving Mikey a rough push. He slowly obliged, and the door was slammed closed behind him. The officer locked it, and he and his two guards left us, their footsteps slowly receding on the concrete floor. Mikey and I looked at each other across the hall, a few feet and two cell doors all that separated us.

"Good night," I said after a moment, suddenly finding the situation laughably absurd.

"Whatever," Mikey groused, sitting on one of the lower bunks.

I turned back to my cell. It was small and cramped, with four bunks against the walls, a toilet and sink in the far corner. Frank was lying across one of the lower bunks, his eyes lidded, looking exhausted. "Well, we made it," he said quietly, his mouth moving, but the rest of his body completely still.

"Great," I muttered, sitting on the bunk opposite him. "Now we just have to wait till tomorrow. Call Matt. And kill a zombie."

"No problem," said Frank, trying not to yawn, his arm flung over his forehead.

I lay back on the hard bunk, facing the back wall of our cell. I could hear the two other prisoners in Mikey's cell bantering back and forth, saying something about cats. "Gerard?" came Mikey's voice, sounding tired and shaky, the way he used to call to me when we were children.

"Mm?" I mumbled in response, just laying down reminding me how exhausted I was.

"I want my sleeping pills."

I didn't answer him for a moment. I turned onto my side, and said, "Maybe if you complain enough, the guards will give you some."

Behind my back, Mikey started miming to the camera that he wanted pills to make him sleep. I was out before he finished.

* * *

"Everyone get back away from the doors! Clear off, away from the doors, please!"

I blinked my eyes open and heard Frank moaning behind me. The shouting continued in the corridor, the same idea repeated over and over with different words. Boots tramped against the floor. I could hear the metal scraping of cell doors opening, the click of keys turning in locks. "Back from the doors, everyone get back from the doors!" I blinked my eyes again and got up.

A guard was just reaching our door. "Stay back, boys," he said, unlocking our door with a metallic click. "Step outside, single file." Other prisoners were already outside of our cell, waiting in a long double line for the guards to move on. Frank and I stood at the front of the line behind the guards. Mikey and his cell mates were being summoned to join us. Mikey quickly pushed himself into the position next to me.

"No pushing and watch the language," one of the officers warned. "Follow and no funny business."

The officers led us down the hall, stopping at different cells and releasing the prisoners. Some cells were passed by entirely; some prisoners were not allowed to leave.

They were taking us out to the prison yard. I realized our plan was going to unfold much earlier than I had thought. "I want my phone call!" I shouted suddenly.

Perhaps this wasn't the best time to try the officer's patience. He was not pleased to hear me say this. "What good will a phone call do you, Mr. Way, you will be released in three days if you are not cleared sooner."

"I don't care. I have a right to one phone call, and I want it now."

I stared unyieldingly at the officer, and he stared right back. "All right," he said after a moment. "Bingley! Mr. Way wants his phone call, you take him. Bring him to the yard when he's done."

"Yes, sir," said the officer called Bingley, and he took me firmly by the arm and led me to a solitary black telephone hanging on the wall in a small room. "Now before you make your call, I'm going to give you some advice, and I don't demand that you use it, but I would advise that you do. Don't waste your call, so definitely don't call your girlfriend; best friends might bail you out, but they'll want a refund later, parents will be extremely disappointed and give you punishments, which you probably already deserve. Best choice is probably to call your grandma; they're generally sympathetic."

"Thanks, dude, but I already know who I'm calling," I said, taking the phone from it's cradle and beginning to dial Matt's number. Bingley was standing ridiculously close, practically between me and the phone. "Give me some space, man," I muttered disgustedly, turning away from him. I listened to the slow, repetitious whine informing me that Matt's phone was ringing, and then, just when I was about to give him up as a bad job, I heard him answer. "Hello, this is Matt."

"Matt, it's Gerard."

"Oh, Gerard. You got arrested then?"

"Yeah, talk quietly. Um. Matt, I, um...take care of my brother."

"O-kay," Matt said slowly, realizing I was trying to tell him something but having no idea what it was.

"I don't know how he's going to react to this, me being in prison. He's kind of sensitive. Maybe you should give him his present early."

"His present," said Matt. He was so close to comprehension, I could feel it.

"Yeah, the one I gave you. I know you were planning on giving it to him later today, but I think you should do it now."

"I understand," he said soberly, and a rush of victory filled my heart.

"All right. There's a cop waiting to take me to the prison yard now, so I gotta go. Thanks, man."

"All right, I guess I'll see you in a couple days."

"Yeah, take care."

I hung up the receiver. Officer Bingley was giving me a funny look, like he thought I was up to something weird. I shifted uncomfortably. "Are you taking me out, or what?"

"Rm," he grunted, pushing back from the wall where he'd been leaning. "This way." He led me down a hallway and out into the yard. Most of the prisoners in the jail appeared to be there, standing in groups, conversing in low voices, mocking the other prisoners, jogging around the yard. Some of the men were playing football on one end. I scanned the grounds for Mikey and the others, and I saw Frank waving to me from near the fence. I approached him, leaving Bingley against the wall. I could feel his eyes boring into my back as I walked away.

Frank's eyes were questioning me as I approached. "He knows," I said. "He's coming."

"When he does this, we'll have to be quick," Mikey was saying.

"We might have to hide it until the officers are distracted," I said. "Where's the walking dead?"

"Over there," said Toro, pointing across the yard. In the shade of the jail, away from the rest of the prisoners, two officers stood near the walking dead, watching his every move as he slowly looked around the yard. We couldn't kill him while he was that close to the officers. Something big would have to happen to get their attention, to draw them away from their charge.

"We have to start a riot or something," Mikey said quietly, his eyes on the walking dead. "It's got to be something big."

"But not until we have the gun," I reminded him. "We have to wait."

We didn't have to wait long. Matt is a great friend, and I love him to death. Not every friend you have is going to be willing to run to the fence of a prison yard to throw a gun over for you, and then try to escape before the cops realize who you are. This, of course, was what Matt had to do to get the gun to us. Run down as fast as possible, throw the gun over the wall, and then disappear back up the hill before the cops caught him. He would probably be on camera, but wearing a hat and with his collar pulled over his face, he was not worried about identification.

We were standing near the wall when I heard a dull thud off to my right. Even though it was exactly what I was waiting for, it took me a second to realize what it was. "Oh my god, somebody get it!" Mikey suddenly exclaimed in a tense whisper, as Frank and I darted towards the nine millimeter lying in the grass. Frank reached it first, lifting it quickly from the ground, but handed it to me. Killing the living dead had been my idea, my game; the first shot would be mine.

I took the handgun quickly and hid it in the inside pocket of my jacket, my eyes casually scanning the officers guarding the prison yard; they didn't seemed to have noticed us, thank goodness.

But we wouldn't have much time. Someone in security would tip them off to the fact that a mysterious man had just run up outside the wall and thrown something over. And that Frank Iero had found it, and Gerard Way now possessed it. We needed our diversion now.

Amazingly, unbelievably, it was at that moment that the riot broke out. I'm not exactly sure what transpired before the riot, only that suddenly over half the prisoners were screaming at each other, some already in physical combat, all in pitched argument and not caring that the officers were standing by, ready to stop them. Which they proceeded to attempt to do.

I stepped away from the others, wanting a clear shot to the walking dead. The two officers guarding it were running towards the riot now, leaving their quarry alone in the shadows of the jail. I sighted him with my eyes, gazing at him intensely, seeing my target, feeling it, and knowing exactly where I wanted my bullet to go. Then in one quick, fluid motion, I pulled the gun from my jacket, cocked it back, lowered it to my target, and shot.

If you've never seen a member of the living dead being shot with an incendiary round, you need to find yourself a zombie hunter so you can watch it being done. Or better yet, shoot one yourself. The living dead are highly flammable, and on instant contact with the flaming bullet, it exploded into raging fire, screaming in pain and confusion. The officers were turning back to see who was screaming; they were immediately freaking out when they saw that their "special" prisoner was on fire. "Somebody stop him! Help him!" I heard an officer screaming. Without really thinking, I turned to the wall and tossed the nine millimeter in a fast spiral out of the prison yard. I couldn't be caught with the gun.

The walking dead was blazing and fast lowering to the ground; in moments he would be nothing but black ash blowing in the wind.

"Hey! What's someone so small still doing in jail?"

I turned immediately towards the voice. Several enormous men were approaching Frankie; I remembered them glaring at him the night before. They were taking advantage of the riot and the cop's confusion to confront him unhindered.

Frank was immediately angry. "I'm five foot four, I'm not that short!" he shouted.

The men looked pleased, as though they wanted a confrontation, wanted a battle.

I ran, throwing myself between Frank and the men. They looked surprised, but unconcerned by my presence. "Don't mess with him," I warned, as they continued to come closer.

"Or what? You going to stop us?"

"He needs to learn," someone in the back said.

"Done," said the one in front, and he grabbed me by my jacket with one hand and slammed his other fist to the side of my head. Sparks flew in front of my eyes and I felt myself weaken, almost losing consciousness; vaguely I could hear the others jeering and urging him on. I felt a blinding pain suddenly burst from the side of my head, and then I met the ground and tasted red blood.

I could hear Frank shouting, the only voice I comprehended anymore. All around me was shouts and screams, jeering and laughter and a sudden rushing scream that I hardly realized came from me. Pain made itself repeatedly known on my side, my ribs, my chest, my legs; rhythmically almost did the sudden surges come and I could feel myself drifting out of comprehension...

A new voice was shouting...pain, such pain...but I realized that the rhythmic attacks had stopped, that whoever was torturing me had finished, or given up, or been pulled back. I spat blood from my mouth and blinked my eyes open.

Frankie's voice, finally comprehensible, "Gerard, Gerard...talk to me, are you okay?"

I wanted to speak but at the same time I didn't. My mouth was slowly filling with blood again. I swallowed what little was in my mouth and rolled onto my back. My whole body ached and I could imagine my pale skin must be bruised absolutely everywhere. I groaned, the sun shining down into my eyes, and then I saw Frankie extending his hands to help me up. I grasped his hands and he pulled me to my feet, which was the most terrible, rushing, roller coaster sensation I have ever felt in my life. I stumbled against him, and he pushed me back, looking at me evenly, his expression one of honest concern and willingness to help wherever he could. "I'm okay," I muttered. "Where...?"

"Gerard and Michael Way, Frank Iero, Ray Toro. Over here, please."

I looked up to see an officer with a clipboard waving us over to where he was standing. I approached, leaning on Frank's shoulder.

The officer looked at us over his clipboard and then stated, "You are clear. Mr. McCracken has produced sufficient evidence to free you from any suspicion of involvement in the events of last night. Come with me and I will have your possessions returned to you."

We were led back through the halls of the jail, where the same woman who had taken my cell phone the night before handed it back with just as much distance and disinterest in her job as she had taken it. Bert was standing nearby and looked thrilled to see me. "Hey, Gerard, I told you I was good, told you I was clean. Oh, hey, man, you don't look so great."

"Thanks for noticing," I muttered, still leaning on Frank's shoulder.

Bert walked up to me without any hesitation, grabbed my arm and pulled it over his shoulders. "Come on, let's go," he said, one arm around my waist as he led me toward the doors.

Behind me, I heard Mikey say, "Hey, Matt, it's Mikey. Could you come pick us up? We've been discharged."

Matt was actually waiting for us outside in his crappy SUV when we stepped into the parking lot. He rolled down one window, eyeing Bert or me, it was hard to tell. "Hey, I was nearby," he said, reaching across to open the passenger door for me. "Are you okay, Gerard?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," I said, looking off to the side of the jail, where I could see the wall of the prison yard. It was on this side of the yard that I had thrown Ray's nine millimeter. "Bert, would you take me down there?" I asked, pointing towards the wall.

"What, why?" he said, though already obliging me.

"We have to find the gun. They can't find our fingerprints."

"Oh, right," he said, as though he had known what I meant the whole time.

We were near where I had been standing, I swear. I feigned a nervous, pained collapse while Bert stood by pretending to be impatient with me. I felt through the grass with the hand supposedly supporting me, and felt cold metal against my fingers. I grasped the gun handle and carefully, Bert and I performed what had to have been the greatest sleight-of-hand trick ever, as he came in front of me, blocking the camera's view of me, pulling me up with one hand while I slid the gun between us and into my jacket with the other. Then he was helping me back up the steep incline to the asphalt. The others had already climbed into Matt's SUV. I could see Ray's curly red afro reflected in the rearview mirror.

I climbed into the back seat next to Frank. Mikey was already gazing out of his window, his mind lost to more intriguing things. He was snapped out of his deep reverie when Bert climbed in next to me and the back seat suddenly seemed a hell of a lot smaller.

"Hey, don't push so much!" Mikey complained, shoving Frank, who accidentally elbowed me.

"No room, Mikey!" Frank answered, pushing him back.

Mikey had nothing to elbow but the window, which apparently was harder than I was.

"Okay, guys, play nice or I'll make one of you walk home to give the others more room," said Matt as he shifted to drive and began to take us awa

**Okay. I know this chapter is pretty short, but I have a good reason. I editted out half of it. I wrote this months ago, and at the time I really loved the second half of this chapter. Reading it now, I'm not exactly enamored with it. So...I'm leaving the choice up to you. You can read the second part of this chapter, which covers the drive home, or you can skip on to the next chapter, in which case you will miss nothing. You may like the second part, like I used to, or...maybe not. C'est ton choix. Please enjoy, whichever decision you make. :)**

We bought milkshakes on the way back home to celebrate the first successful mission of My Chemical Romance. Bert was intrigued by our ideas, and by our name. "I might want in on this, this sounds cool," he said, as well as, "You guys are making me jealous!"

On the way back we listened to a lot of weird but good music on the radio, while Ray and Matt had a long, engaged discussion about the potentials of various chemical elements. The discussion was mostly one-sided, as Ray knew what he was talking about and Matt was only intrigued. Frank almost got milkshake poured on his head by Mikey, and Bert repeatedly pulled me into his lap and did weird, gay things to me while I tried to fight him off. We also sang that dorky, awesome milkshake song, Mikey and Frank competitively louder than the rest of us.

"My milkshake brings more boys to the yard,

That's right, it's better than yours,

Damn right, it's better than yours..."

"So when can I get my car back?" Frank was asking.

"As soon as I can acquire new plates, if you're interested," Toro responded, looking back to see Frankie's reaction.

"That would be nice," he agreed.

"Perhaps we could keep the newer Camaro as well," Toro was musing. "It shouldn't be too difficult to disguise it..."

"I want the new Camaro!" Mikey exclaimed.

"Hey, I could use a Camaro," said Bert, throwing in his piece just because he could. "We could make out in the back of it, totally freak out..." he said, taking me by my face and giving me a kiss so sexy it was actually funny.

"Great, Bert, now I'm going to be thinking about you making out with my brother every time I drive that car," Mikey complained behind me as Bert and I had a wrestling/kissing match next to him.

"That solves our problem, then. I will take the car as I have greater control over my thoughts than you," Toro responded, sounding satisfied.

Somehow I managed to push Bert's face away from mine. He relinquished me with an unnecessarily loud kissing noise that cracked Frank up immediately.

"Guys, Bert, don't be weird, you're going to make me die of a heart-attack while driving," Matt warned, trying his utmost to keep a straight face.

"Oh my god, dude, it's a police car, RUN!" Bert exclaimed suddenly, causing Matt with his wonderful reflexes to slam on the brakes, throwing everyone forward, before he realized it didn't matter if the cops saw us or not. We nearly died laughing.

**Fez. **

**...I'm fine.**

***glares at younger, summer-time self* *summer-time self cringes under glare* "Why did you write that?" "Because...I really love Bert and Gerard!" "Okay. I give you slack, but only because this story is supposed to follow the events of the real life of the real band My Chemical Romance. No more of that. Got it?" "Okay..." *crosses summer-time fingers behind summer-time back* **

**Rebel Rose**


	4. Admonitions and Electric Currents

**When people try and put the pieces back together **

**Just to smash them down,**

**Turn my headphones up real loud**

**I think I need them now...**

ADMONITIONS AND ELECTRIC CURRENTS

We were doing well. I felt that we were, I told myself continually that we were.

But we weren't on a case. We didn't know the whereabouts of any of the living dead. We couldn't even be certain that any others existed, although we all believed that they did.

It had only been three days since prison, I told myself. Three days was a very short period of time. Not having a case for three days was not important, not a big deal.

That's what I kept telling myself.

I felt useless, pointless without a task before me as I wandered my house, empty except for me. I would have to leave for work tonight, but that was still several hours away. I felt so hopeless.

I wonder sometimes if we're doing what's right. If we're even sane. I don't know, or pretend to. But I don't want to believe that we're hopeless. That we're pointless. I want to believe that there is reason behind all of this, that what we are and what we've chosen to do has purpose. I slapped an empty beer bottle off the table as I walked by. It fell with a gentle thump onto the carpet, but did not break, merely rolled farther under the table.

My cell phone vibrated on the counter. I glanced at the screen unenthusiastically, not expecting any calls, not caring who was calling.

It was Frank. I answered immediately. "Hey, Frank."

"Hey, Gerard. Can I come over and use your shower?"

I almost asked him to repeat himself. That was weird. "Yeah, sure. Whyy?"

"Because Mikes is being unrepentantly stubborn and taking forever in the shower. And I want hot water when it's my turn."

I smiled slightly, but was still too lost in my thoughts to laugh. "Yeah, you can come. I don't mind."

"Thanks. See you in a few."

The line went dead. I could imagine Frank searching for his keys under the cushions of his and Mikey's crappy couch.

I unlocked the door for him and slumped on my own couch. I was still sitting there, unmoving and lost in my own thoughts, when Frank opened the front door. "Hey," he said, stepping inside. He threw his keys on the side table. "How's life today?"

It took me several moments to answer. "Empty," I said quietly.

"It'll get better," Frank promised, briefly gripping my shoulder on his way by. "You should call Mikey. At least it would get him to leave the shower!" he shouted as he passed around the corner into my room. Apparently the shower in the guest bathroom wasn't good enough. Nice, Frankie. Really nice.

I was lying on the couch watching old reruns of Batman when Frank emerged into the living room, dressed in baggy jeans and a black t-shirt, drying his hair with one of my towels. His mere presence in the room made me feel slightly better.

"Thanks, man," he said, throwing the towel at me and throwing himself on the other end of the couch. He gave me an impish grin from behind his veil of wet, tangled hair.

Mikey can't take lonely. He never could. He was at my house within the next fifteen minutes.

"Hey, I thought you might be here," he said to Frank as he came inside, locking the door behind him.

"Hey, Mikes. Electrocute yourself yet?" Frank asked casually.

"Hey, I'm still alive," Mikey objected, giving Frank a friendly push as he came around the couch. He sat down on my legs, leaning back as though he was completely comfortable.

My phone rang and I pushed at Mikey, trying to make him move, but instead of moving, he reached over to where my phone rested on the coffee table and handed it to me before settling back into his comfortable position.

Ray Toro was calling me.

"Hey, it's Gerard."

"Hi, Gerard, it's Toro. I'm calling to state a concern of mine about our methods for taking out the living dead."

"Oh? Hang on, I'll put you on speaker...or maybe you could just come over. Frank and Mikey are here."

"I'll come. Where is your house?"

I invited Matt over as well, but he couldn't get off work. He begged me to tell him what happened later, and I promised I would.

Toro's concern was one of legality and arrest.

"Because of our last adventure, we've all been arrested before," he stated, sitting in my uncomfortable easy chair (which Mikey called "the difficult chair"). "We were clean and set free, but we're now in the police records. Perhaps not a mug shot..." he said, halting Mikey's question. "...but in the records still. I'm concerned that our possession of certain weapons could prove perilous in the days to come, should one of us be arrested for a real reason, or our houses or persons searched. You do carry a gun everywhere as you told me, don't you?" he added to me.

"Yes," I said, nodding. I loved my revolver. Seven shots. It was unique.

"If they search my house," he said, more slowly, as though he wasn't certain what we would think of what he was about to say. "What they find will not be important. I served briefly with the military and I have kept my permits current. What I think..." he leaned forward slightly "...is that we need more weapons. More to give to someone who unexpectedly assists us...your friend, Bert McCracken," he added, gesturing to me. "Or someone else that we may recruit."

"Or if we ever fight more than one of the living dead," said Mikey. "One person may need more shots more quickly than one handgun can hold."

"Agreed," said Toro, nodding. "I have a friend who may be able to get us more weapons at a good price. He knows someone who manufactures incendiaries as well."

"It would be nice if we could get a rifle," said Frank, almost as though he were thinking out loud.

We were all staring at him. "What? We could take them out long range. If we knew where they were going to be, we could just wait and snipe them from the rooftops."

"Assuming you don't get caught," I interjected. "Can you imagine getting caught up there, Frankie, they'd think you were a terrorist or something."

"If you got caught," Toro mused. "I'll talk to my friend. I think most of our weapons...the weapons we wouldn't normally carry or need...should be kept in my house. It won't be as suspect for a large number of weapons to be there than it would be in this house."

"Agreed," I said.

"Although, if they do find the weapons in my house..." Toro paused. I wondered if he was considering the implications of the authorities discovering the experiments he was doing in that house. "Which of you is most likely to accidentally stick a fork in a toaster?" he asked unexpectedly.

"Mikey," Frank answered automatically. I laughed a little and Mikey and I poth pushed him.

"And who would be the one to yell, 'Hey, it's still plugged in!'?"

"That would be me," said Mikey, nodding as Frank laughed.

"I would definitely be the one yelling," I said. "I think we're all really protective of Mikey for things like sticking forks in toasters."

"Yeah, definitely," said Frank. "Mikey and I live in the same house," he explained to Toro, "And he's always doing crazy things like that, and I'll go to Gerard later like, 'I can't believe he did this today.'"

"Yeah, I leave the tea on overnight," said Mikey, smiling self-deprecatingly.

"God forbid that kid ever lives alone," Frank declared.

I was starting to laugh. "He had to promise he would watch him because he likes to do this thing where he'll take a heater into the shower and plug it in..."

"Oh god!" Frank exclaimed.

"...and there's water everywhere!"

"I did that one time..." Mikey agreed.

"What about the times with the radio?" I asked.

"...and I was pretty warm when I did it though."

Toro was nodding as though we had accidentally answered his unspoken question. "Okay. My house it is then."

We hung out at my place for a while; I made coffee while we discussed everything from hunting strategies to music. When I remembered I was supposed to leave for work, I was already almost late. I had time to grab my jacket and a mug half-full of coffee before I left.

They were still in my house when I got home, the lights on in the dining room. They were playing poker. I smiled, hanging up my coat, and joined in.

**Hey, Killjoys. So this chapter is short, but that's okay, because there is no action. Fear not, for the next chapter is ripe with it... Let the engines roar!**

**xoxo,**

**Rebel Rose**


	5. I Get Locked in My Own Closet

**Bonsoir, Rabat-joies! ...that's "Killjoys" in French... I think... Anyway! I love this chapter because...well. You must review and tell me about Mikey. Because he's awesome. :D**

I GET LOCKED IN MY OWN CLOSET

You're still here? I didn't know people would want to know this badly what happened to us, about the dead walking. If they are dead, I assume they're dead...or undead, or something. So, we had another mission. Another adventure. It was kind of wild. I wasn't there for the first part...for the beginning...but I know what happened. Mikey was

Hey, guys. It's Mikey. Gerard's brother. Yeah, hi. I had to incapacitate Gerard, I just realized he's about to tell a story about something that happened to ME. Shouldn't I tell the story about what happened to me? Well, and Frankie. Frankie was there. He's here now, don't tell him I'm telling this story for him. Hang on, Gerard's getting up...

Okay. Hang on...

Wait...

Gods, this man does not give up!

Okay. Gerard is in the closet. He's not happy. I put a chair under the handle but he'll probably break free in a few minutes. He's yelling at me. He just told me to...well, you can imagine.

Okay. So anyway. Frankie and I were bored out of our minds, which was a common occurrence for us. We're living in the same house. I work four days a week, Frankie works three. And he has a night job. Gerard has a night job, too, and sometimes I wonder...but that's kind of creepy, don't ask me about that. My mind is dark and messed up.

We were bored. Okay. I need to focus. Don't let me wander again. We were bored out of our minds, and after wandering the streets for a while, we came to a more dilapidated, beaten up part of the city. The buildings were old and a lot of them were abandoned. It was actually fairly close to where Gerard's friend, Bert McCracken, lives. I assume he told you about him, right? Well, he helped us with our first real zombie case...he got us arrested. Which does not make him a good guy or in any way useful! Besides, Gerard won't tell you this, but that night he helped us, he was definitely high.

Argh! Smack me. Focus, Mikey. Focus. Okay, we were bored, and we had walked into this older part of town, and one of the buildings had a service ladder on the back side that was still lowered, as though someone had forgotten to put it back up when they were finished working. Or the ladder was too old to stay up any more. So we climbed up...wouldn't you, it's like it was left that way for us to find it, to redeem us from our boredom!...and actually, I had to give Frankie a boost, the man is tiny...eeeg, he's walking by outside the office right now. Don't read over my shoulder, don't read over my shoulder... Okay, he's gone. Okay. The top of the building was really awesome, there was this old, broken air conditioning unit right by the old entrance—we tried to get in, but the lock was the only thing that hadn't failed in it's old age. Eventually we just sat near the edge of the wall and threw broken pieces of the roof at the people below. They didn't appreciate that. Actually, you'd be surprised how many people DIDN'T realize we were throwing stuff at them, I mean like, they actually thought the building was crumbling as they were walking by. Whatever. Fate does not have aim like Frankie does. But then we hit this one guy...Frank actually threw a fairly large piece of the building at him... But he, it was like, he KNEW we were there, the moment it hit him, he turned to look up at us. And his face was kind of sunken and sort of wrinkled, like the skin was old and dead and just hanging from the bones inside. If it hadn't been for my brother, I probably would have just thought he was extremely ugly and then ran with Frankie for a safer rooftop, but unfortunately, Gerard does exist—although he's stopped making noise in the closet, I think he may be trying something other than brute strength to get the door open...and he's probably going to succeed any moment now—and because of him, I have seen the living dead. And I knew for dead certain that this was definitely one of the living dead.

Frankie knew it, too. It wouldn't have been such a big deal—we probably would have called Gerard and told him to bring a gun (he's slamming repeatedly against the door now. Keep trying, brother.), and thrown stuff at the zombie in the mean time. Actually that was my first reaction. To throw another piece of roof at him. But then he threw something back. I hit his face, and some of the skin tore back, although he didn't really bleed...his blood was dark and hideous, like it had sort of gelled inside his veins... But then he grasped his left arm with his right, and he suddenly pulled his arm off...yes, I mean that, PULLED HIS ARM OFF...and threw it at us. We screamed like girls, scrambling to dodge it. We heard him moaning loudly, angrily below as we lay on the rooftop with his twitching appendage between us. It was pale and pock-marked and hideous. There was gelatinous, black blood slowly oozing out of it. He was still roaring below...I'm not sure if he was angry at us or if he hadn't realized how painful it would be to rip his own arm off. The arm was starting to move of it's own volition, inching it's way toward Frankie. I stood up and we ran for the edge of the roof. I thought

Hey. This is Gerard. Michael James Way just locked me in my own closet! I think he just explained how he and Frank got a dead arm thrown at them...yeah. Okay. He called me. And he was freaking out, and he said he was running from a zombie. I thought he was playing video games. I was actually playing video games, too.

"Gerard, I'm serious!" he exclaimed

"So am I...wait." And then I realized that what he was saying might be meant literally. "Where are you?"

"Downtown! Running towards downtown! With Frankie. And we have no gun, I have no gun, no way to kill it!"

"Hang on, I'll be there," I said, dropping my game controller. I didn't even pause the game. I grabbed my jacket and my keys and left. My revolver was still in the inside pocket of my jacket with several extra rounds.

Mikey was talking to me the whole time I drove. He was half-delirious and most of the time I couldn't understand exactly what he was saying, he was panting so hard. Actually, I'm not even sure that most of the time he knew exactly what he was saying either. But then he said, his voice somewhat more calm than before, "There's an old building ahead. It's abandoned and sort of broken."

"You mean like that one?" I said, looking out the window at a large, beaten office-building, Mikey and Frank running down the sidewalk next to it. I slammed on the brakes, throwing the car into first and killing the engine, before throwing myself out the door, my hand already reaching for my revolver. I was running towards the sidewalk, Mikey and Frank running towards me, a monster with one arm missing several yards behind them. I rushed between them just as I reached the sidewalk, raising my revolver. I saw unexpectedly that there was absolutely no one behind the walking dead, and it brought a grim satisfaction and assurance to my mind as I pulled the trigger repeatedly, bringing the living dead down in flames. It took three shots to send him up. Something about him wasn't as flammable as the others we had dealt with. And he burned more slowly. There was time for us to gaze at him, disturbingly human as he stood, wreathed in flames, roaring in pain or disappointment, it was hard to say. And then he was nothing but ash, blowing in the wind.

Mikey let out a loud breath behind me. "Gerard. Thank you. Thank you so much, you're my favorite brother ever!" He hugged me tightly, almost choking me to death in the process.

"I'm your only brother, Mikey," I said as he shook me.

"That's beside the point." Mikey finally let me go. "Maybe we can..."

He suddenly stopped. We had all heard the sound from the empty and broken warehouse next to us, like something was moving inside. My mind was racing, deciding if it would be better to let the guy inside believe we killed a person, or for us to leave now and make him think he had imagined it all. Frank's hand grasped my shoulder, pulling at me to move, when we saw him in the window.

"Is he..." Mikey started to ask.

"He was..." I said.

"He's dead!" shouted Frank, just as the door opened, and I raised my revolver and shot unrepentantly. He lurched backwards each time a bullet hit him; on the second shot, he ignited. He burned fast, sinking to the floor before the door frame could light.

For several moments we were silent, staring at the burned, blackened wood in the doorway. We were all thinking the same thing. Slowly Mikey turned to me and Frank, a grin spreading over his face. "I believe we have an infestation," he stated calmly.

"I believe you may be right," Frank agreed.

I pulled out my phone, handing my revolver to Frank. Mikey looked put out.

It took Toro an age to answer his phone. I was going to hang up when, after what must have been the fifteenth ring, he answered, sounding slightly out of breath. "Toro here."

"Toro, it's Gerard."

"Oh, hey, Gerard. I'm sorry I didn't answer immediately, I was in the middle of an important experiment..."

"Toro, we just killed two of the living dead in as many minutes."

Toro was silent, waiting intently for me to continue.

I explained quickly about the building, and our belief that there were more of the living dead inside, and if not inside, in the immediate area. Two in as many minutes was insane. "Bring us more weapons, we're going in," I said.

"I will. Yes. I'll see you in a few minutes." Frank and Mikey were already entering the building as I hung up. Frank still had my revolver. I came quickly behind him, mentally counting the shots I'd fired. Two, two shots was all he had left.

The sun had set when Toro arrived outside the building. The street lamps seemed incapable of lighting this part of town. They glowed around the ancient, empty office buildings, surrounded by faint, orange coronas of light. A faint mist had gathered around the streets, adding to the darkness and lessening my visibility. I was watching for Toro from an upper window, watching the mist gather, the lamps slowly blink on. Then a solitary car came slowly passed the old business district and stopped several yards out in the empty parking lot. "That's him, let's go," I said quickly to Frank, who was waiting behind me. He and I descended the staircase rapidly. Mikey was off somewhere in the building, exploring the shadows with Matt, who had arrived several minutes before.

Toro was climbing out of his car as we sprinted towards him across the parking lot. He looked up in acknowledgement, then moved around to the back driver's side door, as though he expected us to follow. We joined him on the far side of the car. He was rummaging through a black backpack on the seat. As we came up behind him, he extracted one hand, holding a black nine millimeter, which he offered to Frank, and a moment later he emerged with a second one for me. "I also brought these," he said, showing me a box of incendiaries for my revolver. "Since you insist on using that outdated thing," he added mockingly.

I grinned as I took the box, emptying half of the bullets into my coat pocket. "Thanks, man."

"Extra clips, Frank," said Toro. "And these are mine. Is Mikey inside?"

"And Matt."

He grabbed an extra pistol and handed it to Frankie, before throwing the bag on the floorboard and pushing it under the seat. He took another, smaller backpack and slid it over his shoulders. He nodded to us, ready, and we returned to the warehouse, weighted down with extra weapons, and ready to kill the dead.

Mikey was running for his life. In their explorations, he and Matt had found their way into a room with at least three (they've varyingly described it as three and five) walking dead, and having no weapons whatsoever, they had both taken their only option remaining, and run for their lives. Most living dead are kind of slow, and these three (or five) fortunately were no exception. I have fought those that are lightning fast. I have been caught by those that are lightning fast.

Frank and I passed Mikey and Matt halfway down the hall. I handed off a nine mil to Mikey, who was closer to me than Matt, and Frankie and I opened fire on the three zombies that were actually in pursuit of my brother and best friend.

"Hey, I want one!" Matt objected, and Frank reached his free arm back, offering a nine millimeter to Matt. He took it gratefully. Toro entered the hallway several yards behind us. I heard a burst of gunfire.

"Guys," I said, turning, undead flaming behind my head. "People are going to hear this and somebody's going to call the cops."

"Of course," Matt whispered.

"We'll have to get out before they can get here," said Mikey.

"The cops?" Toro asked, approaching us. "You're right. I've got to move my car."

"I'll come with you," said Frank, and the two of them sprinted for the stairway.

I glanced at Mikey. He wasn't going to like what I was thinking, but that wasn't about to stop me. "Mikes?"

"Yeah?"

"We need Bert."

"What? No! No, we don't, Gerard, wait!"

I was already walking towards the stairwell, Matt following in some bemusement, Mikey racing after me and objecting the whole time. "Gerard..."

"He's helped us, he was useful, and we need more men..."

"Gerard, he helped us get arrested, that does not make him useful! He's a nutcase. And he's probably high!"

"Mike, get over it. You don't have to come."

"Fine," he declared, halting firmly at the top of the stairs and crossing his arms.

"Fine," I said as I descended. I heard his footsteps and Matt's voice, and knew they were going after more zombies.

I ran as soon as I was out of the building. Toro's car was already gone, and I wondered where exactly he was moving to. But then I forced myself to stop thinking and just run. Bert's house was several blocks from here, on the north-east side of the square. I was on the south-west.

I was gasping and out of breath when I reached his house. The window in his room was lit. I called his cell phone.

"Hey, it's Bert."

"Hey, it's Gerard."

"Gerard! Hey, what's happening?"

"You feel like killing zombies?"

There was a short pause. I knew he wasn't considering it, he was considering why on earth I had asked if he wanted to. "Um, yes. Definitely. Where are you, man?"

"I'm outside your house." I saw his shadow suddenly appear against the window, the curtains suddenly flying back. I waved to him and saw his expression brighten insanely. He knocked several times on the window and waved his hand excitedly, then seemed to remember that he was also talking to me on the phone. "I'll be right down, hang on." His door opened a few seconds later, and Bert emerged, pulling on his leather jacket. "This is awesome, man. Where are we going?"

"A broken warehouse downtown. Let's go."

"Nice, you mean where all the homeless people hang out?"

"Where all the dead people hang out."

"How do you know they were once people, anyway?"

"I don't know," I answered, kicking a small rock across the street. "They must have been people once. They look like humans."

"That doesn't necessarily mean they are. And if they were, what happened to them? Why aren't all dead people like this?"

"Maybe they are," I said after a moment, although I didn't believe the words I was saying.

We reached the empty parking lot before the warehouse; I heard gunshots as we drew near, and saw flames in an upper window. Thankfully the dead burn fast, or we might have sent the whole building up in flames. I quickened my pace, and offered Bert my nine-millimeter. "Keep it cocked but keep the safety on. Don't waste any shots and don't shoot if I'm in front of you," I warned him. Mikey or Frank I might trust, but Bert I definitely did not.

I'm not sure Bert has ever held a real gun in his life. He seemed intrigued and excited as he cocked the pistol and checked the safety. "The cops will be here soon," I warned him as I stood in the doorway, my eyes searching the darkness for any sign of movement, any sign of the living dead. "If they show up, we're going to have to leave as quickly as possible. I'd rather not be arrested for real reasons."

"Understandable," Bert said behind me.

I entered the warehouse, Bert following my movements carefully. We climbed the spiral staircase where I had left Matt and Mikey. They were gone now, though I had not expected to find them. In a distant hallway, I could hear running footsteps, and then Frank's voice...I think Frank's...shouting somewhere on the floor above.

"Come on," I said quietly, moving towards the hallway. Bert pushed his way in front of me and stepped through the doorway.

He screamed and jumped back, pulling the trigger on his safe weapon, one of the living dead making it's way steadily towards him. I shot him several times in the chest, watching the flames take over.

"I'll go first," I said firmly, stepping in front of Bert and around the corner.

All I knew of him was the sudden groan, and the cold, bloated hands that grasped at my arm, pulling at my jacket. I dropped my revolver from my right hand to my left, somehow completely calm as the zombie screamed into my face, leaning closer towards me. Bert was yelling in the background as I pulled the trigger with my left hand and watched the face of the dead explode before me. I pushed him away with my foot against his chest and he tumbled back into the wall, his head blazing.

"Take them quickly," I said to Bert, moving down the hallway towards an open door, through which I could see a stairwell. "And don't lose your head."

"Not a problem," he said shakily, following me up the stairs.

I could still hear Frank's voice on the floor above, maybe several floors above. Sounds traveled strangely through the building, as I found out when I reached the third floor and found it open and empty. Old papers, a broken metal desk, and fragments of the ceiling panels were scattered across the floor, but there was no one...living or dead...in the room. We ascended to the next level, and there found Toro. He was a madman. I cannot imagine being a soldier on the opposite side of the battle, having to face the strength and madness that was Ray Toro. He seemed taller than usual, his coat blowing around him. He held a sub machine gun in each hand and slowly spun about the room, his eyes darting back and forth, sighting his target a second before he shot. The walls echoed his gunshots back at him, and flames burst all around him, going out only moments before the next undead ignited. He was amazing and fearless and awesome to look upon. Bert and I stood in the doorway watching him for several seconds—though it seemed much longer—until his enemies were defeated and he turned to us, as though he had known we were there the whole time. He probably did, catching sight of us out of the corner of his eye as he whirled to take down another of the walking dead. "Why didn't I get a machine gun?" was my first reaction as he came toward us.

"Sorry," Toro laughed quietly. "These are only prototypes. And they're rather difficult to acquire and understandably difficult to hide."

We ascended the stairwell to the next floor, Bert and I in front, Toro following behind, adjusting the straps on his backpack, which I now knew had carried his extra weapons.

"Where'd you leave the car?" I asked him as we emerged onto the next floor.

"Behind the building, in the old employee parking lot," he responded. Then he stopped. "Whoa."

The fifth floor was entirely composed of a maze of office cubicles. Some of the partitioning walls had been knocked down, but most of them were still intact. And as we watched, one of the living dead walked passed one of the partitions somewhere deeper in the maze.

Perhaps I'm a complete idiot...Mikey would probably agree...but I felt I had to catch the undead and destroy him. And so I ran forward into the maze of office cubicles. They were empty now, I saw as I passed them, devoid of the desks and computers and other office equipment of the past. I came to the place I had seen the undead; he had heard my approach, and was turning to glare at me, moaning. I shot him once, twice, thinking two shots was what it would surely take. Boom went the first shot.

Click came the second.

"Dammit," I whispered, moving backwards at the same rate as the living dead, as he moaned confusedly, reaching his arms out for me. I backed beyond the next section of cubicles, and heard a loud report as another gun was fired, and the living dead burst into flames before me. I could get out that way, not around him, and I turned to find the next path to the wall. Another of the living dead stood solidly in my way. I ran, reaching into my jacket for more incendiaries. It wasn't possible, I couldn't reload and run at the same time. This particular zombie was fast, as fast as the first one I had encountered. I dodged behind another partition, running down the hallway I was faced with.

Another of the undead stood up to face me.

I was already too close to do anything about it, so I roared and threw my shoulder against him as I ran by. He stumbled back but I didn't slow, just kept running down the hallway. There was another break in the partitions, leading towards a wall of large windows. The prime office cubicles. I ran that way, hearing Bert shouting and Toro's sub machine gun suddenly blazing, and one of the walking dead moaning as he encountered the other.

I ran to the windows and stopped, my hands pressed against the glass, gasping. I forced myself to focus, reaching into my jacket for spare bullets.

Something out the window caught my eye. Flashing red and blue lights. Cop cars pulling into the parking lot.

"No, dammit, this is too soon," I whispered, slotting bullets into my revolver. One of the living dead was approaching, moaning at me, and I took out my frustration on him, snapping the cylinder back into place and opening fire on the undead. He roared as I shot, and I realized the cops would probably look up, probably see my silhouette against the window. I ran, pushing the blazing undead aside. He stumbled and smashed against the window. I had no idea the other undead had been standing behind him. He moaned, and was too close to me for me to raise my arm. I shouted, pushing him aside. His hands clutched at me, fingers scrabbling for something to hold onto, but I pushed him, and raised my revolver and shot.

Momentum and the bullets sent him stumbling back, towards the other blazing undead. Perhaps if the other had burned more slowly, they would have collided and kept the second from hitting the window. As it was, however...

The zombie hit and the glass shattered; he gave a moaning scream, fragments of glass showering onto his head, his neck, as his balance was steadily lost and he toppled from the empty window. Wind howled into the building, blowing against the walls, sending the ashes of the first undead swirling into the air. I heard shouting down below, and then a sickening, horrid, crunching and wet thud as the living dead smashed into the asphalt below. The yelling was louder now. More voices joined in.

"The cops are here, we've got to run," I said, turning, knowing that Bert and Toro were close behind me.

"Why did you call me, I don't want to be arrested again!" Bert complained as we ran back through the office space, not bothering with dodging through the walls now, shoving down any partition that got in our way.

Mikey ran passed the doorway as we emerged from the maze of cubicles. He came back immediately, looking in at us. "Hey, guys," he said. "I heard shouting, was that...?"

"The cops. We've got to get out," I said.

Mikey did not look pleased. There were still walking dead to be destroyed. "You're right," he said after a moment. "I'll find Frank."

"I'll find Frank," said Toro. "He knows where my car is. Find Pelissier and come down the back way, I need to hide the contraband in my car. Take this."

He handed Mikey one of his machine guns and left, hurrying down the stairwell, hopefully to find Frank.

Bert and I left Mikey, crossing to the other side of the fifth floor while he raced down the hall for the stairwell on the opposite side. Matt and Frank had to be farther upstairs, he explained.

As we reached the far wall, I heard a distant door slamming downstairs. Either Toro had gone out with a complete lack of stealth, or the police had just entered the building. I approached the window, Bert at my back; I hadn't intended to look down, but something caught my eye, movement in the darkness. I paused, watching the empty lot behind the building carefully. A narrow beam of lamplight illuminated the passing black and white body of a squad car, it's lights powered down. I saw it stop, the rear fender still in the strip of light, several yards in front of the back door. Out of which Toro and Frank were about to walk.

**Run**

**Run**

**Bunny**

**Run.**

**Run **

**Run**

**Bunny**

**Run!**

**xoxo,**

**Rebel Rose**

**P.S. I know this was a cliff-hanger and reading the next chapter is very important right now, but please remember how this chapter started... ;)**


	6. Invisible Squadrons & Cures for Insanity

**Thanks so much to my reviewer Truthful Blasphemy. You made me want to update :) Stay loud!**

INVISIBLE SQUADRONS AND CURES FOR INSANITY

Hey, guys, Frankie here. So, Gerard was updating his zombie-hunting internet thing...I call it a blog, but he insists it's not, a blog is like a journal, and this is not a journal, it's an account of the living dead for the advancement of knowledge and potential saving of the lives of humans. Whatever. It's a blog. Mikey told me that he recently wrote the part about our encounter with that zombie that threw his arm at us...ew...incapacitating Gerard to do so. So, anyway...yeah, Mikey's wrestling with Gerard right now so I can explain what happened to me.

I was in a living-dead dead zone when Toro ran into the room. I almost shot him, to be honest. My nerves were on fire.

"Frank, it's me," he said, holding his hands up in defense. "The cops are here."

"What?" I had no idea they had arrived. Being on the opposite side of the building can do that to you.

"We need to get out fast. Have you seen Pelissier?"

"Matt? No idea. Isn't he with Mikey?"

"Maybe in a few minutes, he will be. Will you help me with the car, I need backup."

"Done," I agreed. Rapidly we descended the stairwell. I could hear gunshots sounding elsewhere in the building. I thought the guys might consider being quiet since the cops were so near, but then perhaps it didn't matter. They knew we were inside, they knew we had guns.

I heard a door slam and I wondered if it was the front entrance. Toro glanced back at me; he was thinking the same as I was. We may be cut off before we reached the exit.

Ground floor. I leaned around a partitioning wall, checking the wide hall beyond for cops. No one, dead or alive.

"Let's go," I whispered, gesturing to Toro, and he slipped passed me into the hallway that would take us towards the back of the building, and the backdoor we had come in only moments before. The hallway opened onto a wide entry way; maybe once it had been a storage area. I raised my pistol as we entered the room, but again, we were miraculously fortunate. No one was there.

Toro was already nearly to the door. I came quickly up behind him, sliding my gun into my belt. This was easy, so easy.

We pushed the door open, and bright lights suddenly glared into my eyes.

"Stop!" shouted a mechanically amplified voice. "Drop your weapons and put your hands up! You're surrounded by an entire squadron right now!

I slowly raised my hands, my mind not in it. Toro was tossing his sub machine gun to the ground, but I didn't abandon my pistol. Maybe there was a chance that he hadn't seen it yet. I blinked against the bright white lights and slowly the cop car came into focus. A solitary cop car, guarding the rear exit. I could just make out the policeman sitting in the front seat, holding the mic from his speaker system to his lips.

"What if we don't want to comply?" I asked him testily. I had never been one to comply. Ever.

"Then my squadron will not hesitate to shoot you!"

I looked slowly around, searching for the squadron. Surely they wouldn't really shoot me. I took a step forward.

"Hey hey hey hey, don't move, now! Stay where you are and keep your hands in the air!"

"I don't think they really are going to shoot me," I said, approaching the car slowly. "You should let us go and forget you ever saw us."

"Why would I want to..."

"Because my father is a very rich man, and influential in high places! If he finds out you've arrested his son, he will make you suffer!" I was nearly to the guy's window now, but he wasn't calling me to stop him. I suspected suddenly that the squadron only existed in the guy's imagination.

He wasn't quite quailing under my powerful act yet. He put his hands on his hips as best he could in the close space of his car. "Oh really? What's his name?"

"Mmmmalfoy!" I said. Yes, I said Malfoy. It was all I could think of, the first name I thought of when I thought spoiled rich kid. I'm sorry. I'm a Harry Potter fan. "Lucius Malfoy. And he's devilishly rich and he will bury you in court cases if you and your fictitious squadron so much as touch me."

The cop looked a bit nervous by my statements, but at the same time he seemed to have a lie-sensing instinct. "Well, I've never heard of Lucius Malfoy."

"Too bad for you," I said, and sprinted into the darkness beyond his car.

"Hey!" he shouted, as Toro grabbed his machine gun from the ground and ran after me. "Come back! You dirty teenagers! Stop! My squadron!"

I was thrilled with this victory. It's awesome to outsmart a guy who's trying to outsmart you. I saw Toro's car in the dim lamplight and skidded to a stop next to the door. I had to wait for Toro to manually unlock his ancient car. He didn't waste time slowing and walking around the car, rather hood-sliding across to the driver's side. For an eternity he seemed to fumble with the lock. "Hurry up, hurry up, I don't want to find out if his squad's actually real or not!" I said anxiously, tapping my foot rapidly to dispel my nervous excitement.

"Get in," Toro said suddenly, and I threw open my door and swung into the seat. Toro started the engine.

"What now? Where are Mikey and the others?" I asked.

"Hopefully on their way out." He grabbed his cell phone and clicked the button. "Gerard?"

* * *

"Hey, Toro," I said, panting as Mikey and I sprinted for the back hallway. We had been told there was a door back here, though I was starting to doubt we had taken the right corridor. "We're coming down, near the back entrance, I think. We're..." Mikey shoved open a doorway at the end of the hall and we emerged into a vast open room, maybe once a storage area. Across the room was a set of double doors. Across the room stalked the living dead.

"Oh crap. We're almost there," I told him. I pocketed my cell phone and drew my revolver from my jacket. Mikey was already taking aim, but hadn't yet opened fire. "Gerard," he said. "The moment we shoot, those cops are going to know we're here."

Mikey and I had had to sneak past several cops on our way into the hall leading to this room. They had been guarding the open hallway near the main entrance. And yes, they would come running.

I grit my teeth and cocked my revolver. "We're going to have to risk it. If we don't kill them, they'll kill the cops."

"Good point," Mikey responded, but still he didn't shoot. And I still held my fire.

"Okay," I said quietly, and I heard running footsteps in the hall behind us. It was Matt and Bert, I knew, catching up after vanquishing the other living dead upstairs. I chose one of the living dead from the four we saw, the one that had singled me out a little before the others. He groaned quietly as we made eye contact, and started to move towards me, his arms reaching out for me. "Open fire."

Our gun shots echoed through the empty room. There is no way anyone in the building didn't hear us. Matt and Bert came beside us and shot as well; the living dead were in flames, and the police were shouting behind us. We were running towards the door.

"Get out, get out, let's go!" I shouted, pushing my way through the flaming dead. Matt threw his shoulder against the door and we stepped out...

...into the blinding lights of the cop car.

"Aawww, I thought they were going to make him move!" Mikey objected, kicking at a loose stone.

"Weapons down, hands up, you're surrounded by my squadron!" came the mechanical voice amplified from the cop car.

I glanced around, seeing the walls around the sunken rear exit, the conspicuous lack of weapon shine. "Yeah right," I said, turning back to the cop car and approaching it carelessly.

"I'm warning you!" he warned me. Unnecessary.

I grabbed his door handle and threw the door open. "Get out."

"What?" he said, cringing back from me.

"Get out," I said, aiming my revolver in his face.

"I'm not allowed to relinquish my squad car, it's against regulations..."

Bert had come up on the passenger's side, and suddenly he pulled the door open and aimed at the cop from that side. I stepped quickly out of the way, allowing the cop plenty of room as he rushed to get out of his vehicle. He turned quickly back to me, but I aimed my revolver back in his face. His hands flew into the air. "Keep walking," I told him, steadily forcing him backwards.

Matt and Mikey were hurrying passed me on the other side of the car. "See you, guys." "We'll be with Toro." "Don't blow anything up!"

"No problem," Bert called as I pushed the cop even farther back.

"Hey, Matt, Mikey, will you take my car?" I asked. "It's parked near the street, on the strip."

"Can I have keys?" Mikey asked, and I threw them at him, before turning back to my prey. He was nearly against the rear door now. Slowly I backed away, keeping my revolver trained on him, hard. "Key's in the ignition?"

He nodded pathetically.

I took another step back, halfway between him and the car. "Gracias," I whispered, and broke for the car.

"Stop, or I'll shoot!" the cop shouted, drawing his pistol, but I was inside the car, slamming the door shut and turning the key, Bert shouting at me senselessly. I shifted to reverse and pulled rapidly backwards, expecting all the time to feel bullets impacting against the car, maybe against my face. They never came, probably because the cop couldn't bring himself to fire on his own car.

"Thanks, man!" Bert shouted back at him, waving out the window as I pulled us away. Toro was just ahead of me in his old, beaten yellow car. I found I liked the police model Charger.

I arched off of the seat, struggling to drive and wrestle my cell phone out of my pocket at the same time. I handed it to Bert. "Toro's on the receiver. Just click the button, tell him I think we should hide out in my house."

Bert examined the phone quickly in the dark and then contacted Toro. "Hey, Toro? It's Bert. Gerard says he thinks we should meet at his house, lay low there."

There was a short pause, and then Toro responded. "Quite reasonable, considering my house is full of...stuff and Frank's car is still wanted and in my garage."

"We could hit my house," Frank's voice came out of the speakers.

I reached across for my phone and Bert held it in front of me, clicking the button for me. "My house is closer."

"Good point," Frank agreed.

"Where is your house?" Toro asked.

"Um... Can you pick us up? Bert and I are going to ditch this car, just give us a few minutes to get away first."

"Sure. Watch yourselves. Don't destroy it."

"I'll try not to," I said, grinning. Bert took my phone back. We coasted over the asphalt past the other cop cars in the squadron. They were all dark and empty, so hopefully no one saw us leaving.

"You think they have trackers on these cars?" Bert asked as I pulled onto the street, disregarding the oncoming traffic. This car had torque, and I was going to over-abuse it while I could. My automobile is a piece of crap.

"Maybe," I said. "Let's take this as far away as possible. Toro can find us later."

So I drove. I wanted so badly to drive like a madman, to race through the city the way Frank and I had done a few nights ago, but at the same time I knew we couldn't risk drawing too much attention to ourselves. Then I realized. We were in a cop car. With a casual thoughtlessness, I flicked on the warning lights (though not the sirens), and steadily stepped farther down on the gas. Bert shouted appreciatively as we shot through the streets, ignoring the stop lights, traffic pulling aside to let us through. We raced through at least three intersections this way before I shut the lights down and resumed a more casual pace as we wound through the streets, making our way farther and farther from the warehouse.

It was many minutes later when I pulled the car outside a Starbucks that was just closing for the night. I pulled the collar of my jacket up over my face, took my phone back from Bert, and together we stepped out of the car and walked down the strip the way we had come. I called Toro and told him where we were. It took him several minutes to find us, but finally we saw his yellow car, pulling up next to us, still halfway in the traffic. I saw Frank turning to watch us as I pulled open the door. We climbed in quickly, Bert, and then me. I slammed the door behind us.

"Okay, give me directions," said Toro, easing off the clutch as the drivers behind us started shouting.

I guided him back through town. We carefully avoided the warehouse, did not even cross to that side of the square until we were several blocks passed it. Finally, we were pulling up my street and into my darkened driveway. I saw something I wasn't expecting, and that was my car, parked in the garage. Mikey and Matt had brought it home. The lights were on in my house, and I saw Mikey's silhouette pass by the window. I found my cell phone and called on the communicator, "Mikey, would you move my car out of the garage? Toro should have that spot, in case the cops saw his car."

It was strange to hear my voice as I spoke it and to hear it as it issued from the speakers on Frank's and Toro's phones.

"Okay," Mikey called back a moment later.

Toro backed out of my driveway, letting Mikey out with my car. Mikey backed out insanely fast, making me want to strangle him. "Easy, Gerard. Relax, he's your brother," Bert said soothingly, holding my arms down as Mikey grinned at me through the window.

Toro pulled carefully into my garage and shut down the engine. My garage was kind of pathetic compared to Toro's, I mused as I got out of the car. I lowered the garage door, Mikey suddenly darting inside just as it came down. He flipped my keys around his index finger and held them out for me. I snatched them, offering him a glare as I silently promised not to ever let him in the driver's seat of my car ever again.

Matt was sitting in my living room, playing video games. "Did you know you left this on?" he asked, killing enemies and spattering blood everywhere.

"Nice," Mikey commented as I hung up my jacket. Several bullets fell out of the pocket and rolled across the floor.

"We'll just lay low for a while," I said to Toro, who was coming nearer to hang his coat and his backpack on my coat rack. "Find out what they know, what they saw. And then you can go."

"Thanks," Toro said again, setting his backpack down by the door. It clanked against the wood floor and I imagined the two sub machine guns that rested within.

Bert was raiding my refrigerator for beer. He looked exhausted, but the bottle in his hands raised his spirits considerably. "I think I like this job," he said, wresting the cap off with his shirt and taking a quick swig. "Killing zombies for a living. It's like, not even real life."

"Only it's not for a living, we still have to keep our regular jobs," I said, going to the frige and gazing at the beer bottles within. I decided I didn't really want one and closed the door. "It's not like anyone would pay us to hunt living dead."

"Not if people actually knew about them," said Bert. "There's got to be people who know about this stuff, or have seen them or something."

"And for some reason they don't think they're mad?" I said with a faint smile, sitting down at the table. I was suddenly too exhausted to remain standing.

"No, they might think that at first," said Bert, drawing up a chair and clunking his bottle down on the table. "But then when they see the add for zombie hunters, I don't know, like, in the yellow pages or something..."

"You would advertise as a zombie hunter in the yellow pages?" I asked, a grin spreading across my face.

"Yeah," said Bert, and I started to laugh.

"Would that be under zombie or hunter?" asked Mikey from my living room.

"Exterminator," said Frank.

"Pest control," suggested Toro.

"I would look under insanity," Bert suggested suddenly.

"Of course," I said.

"Yeah, seeing zombies..." Bert began.

"Call us and we promise you won't see them anymore," I said, and everyone laughed. I reached across the table and took a swig of Bert's alcohol.

"I am serious, though," said Bert, after I had given him back the bottle and he had taken another drink. "I like this. I could do this."

I wanted to ask him to join us, as my friend, but at the same time I knew Bert was a little crazy and I wasn't sure asking him would be wise. Our chances of capture and arrest would suddenly get very high.

"Sure, you could," said Mikey, still sitting in the living room, watching Matt getting beaten up by virtual enemies. "But I do warn you, Bert. It's nearly impossible for us to get life insurance."

_Cause I'm open, and I'm bleeding_

_All over your brand new rug_

_And I need someone to help me sew them up._

**Did I mean to put in that quote from Weezer? I made myself laugh when I read that, I had totally forgotten that was in there :P btw, the above lyrics were also lyrics that I forgot I put in my fanfic. I wrote those, not because they had something to do with the fic, but because I was exhausted and unsure of what I was doing. An hour to drive in a stolen cop car to anyone who caught the Weezer lyrics and knows what song the other lyrics are from. :)**

**xoxo,**

**Rebel Rose**


	7. Noise and Kisses

***Summer-time Rose sneaks into view, glances around for Rebel Rose* "Okay, guys. I refuse to believe what Rebel Rose says about Gee and Bert. They're so awesome! And I don't believe her when she says I'll grow out of this. I'm posting. XD Don't tell her I was here...she might strangle me, and because I am the other half of her brain, she can't live without me. Okay. It's time for me to start running. Stay loud!"**

_**"What was the question?"**_

_**"I think whether we made out for a long period of time."**_

_**~ Bert and Gerard, answering questions on Steven's Untitled Rock Show**_

NOISE AND KISSES

I've never really been one for parties. I've never wanted to be the center of attention, always hung back in the corners. Mikey had people skills that I severely lacked. But I hadn't really minded parties, if they were at someone else's house. I never threw parties at my own. I never think anyone will come.

Having everyone hiding out at my place was the most people that have ever been in my house at one time. Everyone stayed over that first night, which was kind of ridiculous. I don't think we would have been caught if some of the guys had gone home. My house isn't exactly a mansion; I have one bedroom and a sort of guest room...I suppose it's supposed to be a guest room or an office or something. I never use it. Toro and Frank eventually settled on sharing that room. Toro didn't mind sleeping on the floor, but Frank insisted on taking the cushions off the back of my couch and using them as a bed. Mikey then jumped onto the couch and declared what was left of it was his, no objections, no arguments, it's mine. Matt slept in the difficult chair, which he claimed was comfortable, although I imagine he was too exhausted to feel how uncomfortable it actually was.

I was standing in the living room, having just heard Frank close the door to the office, when I realized Bert was standing behind me, looking at me expectantly, waiting. "And of course I get to share a bed with you," he said, hugging me with a childish smile.

I hadn't intended for things to work out that way, but it didn't really bother either of us. Don't get the wrong idea, Bert and I...don't date. ...But we go out. We go out in a comrades-in-arms sense! Whatever, it wasn't creepy for either of us. He's one of my best friends.

Bert took his beer into my bedroom. I was exhausted. I used to think I was a mild insomniac, but I've changed my mind since we started hunting the living dead after dark. I glanced at the mirror and saw red veins standing out in my eyes. Bert's eyes were bloodshot as well, but his were usually like that.

He took a deep pull from his beer bottle and handed the rest to me. His eyes lit up with a childish glee when he saw my bed, and he ran and jumped onto it, landing comfortably on his side, supported by one elbow, watching me. I swallowed some of his beer and came to sit down, offering him the bottle. He took a swig and handed it back, sitting up to pull off his shoes. "So, when did you see that first zombie, exactly?"

I laughed. What was it, like, a week ago? "A week...maybe less. Something crazy."

"That is crazy. How did you know he wasn't alive, exactly? Like...how?"

"He...kind of...I don't know, he looked weird." I gave him the beer bottle and started unlacing my Converse. "And he saw me and his eyes sort of...focused on me. Like he couldn't see anyone else, all he knew was my existence."

"And he wanted you."

"Yes," I said, suddenly finding the idea funny. I took the beer away from him for another swig. The bottle was almost empty.

"But how did you know he wasn't just a loader or something?" Bert asked, trying to take his bottle back.

"I shot him."

"What? You shot a man in public?"

"He's not a man, he's dead. He's completely dead. And he was going to kill me, I swear, I had no options. So I shot him. And he didn't die, he wouldn't die."

I explained about realizing I had to run before someone called the cops, and realizing that I couldn't leave him there. Luring him, the chase, calling Mikey and Mikey not believing I was actually in mortal danger. "Actually, no one's believed I'm actually in mortal danger the first time I tell them."

"Hey, I did, man."

I turned to look at him. "No, you didn't."

"Oh, no, you're right. Sorry!"

"Doesn't matter."

Bert flicked his fingernail against the beer bottle. "But how did you kill it? You didn't have incendiaries back then."

"Toro had a flame-thrower. He was someone Mikey knew, so we kind of...well, we locked the living dead in the trunk—"

"You had a dead man in your trunk!"

"—and drove to Toro's house. We didn't even know if it would burn, we just thought we had to find a way to utterly and completely destroy it."

"So normal bullets have no effect at all?"

"None. Nothing."

"Hm." Bert swilled the last of his beer in the bottle, offered it to me, then drank the last in one quick swig. He dropped the bottle down on the floor. I listened to it rolling under the bed and across my room. Bert reached his arms around my chest and pulled me down on the bed. "Come here, my zombie hunter," he teased, kissing my cheek dramatically.

I woke up with a beam of horrid sunlight heating my legs and waist. Ughh, sleeping in skinny jeans is not comfortable. I rolled to the left and felt Bert's back against my arm. He groaned slightly in his sleep and I carefully eased myself onto my back, trying not to hit him again. I didn't need to try; Bert was an enragingly light sleeper, and was awake already. He slowly turned to look at me, blinking, his eyes still red and bloodshot. "Gerard?"

"Bert."

He looked at me for a second. "Hey."

"Hi."

He rolled onto his stomach and lay still for a long time. I was still exhausted; my muscles ached from running so much last night; my shoulder ached from the kick of my revolver. I heard footsteps in the hall outside my door, and then Mikey's voice saying something, another voice saying something back.

"I wonder if we killed all those zombies," Bert said with a yawn.

I snorted. "Probably not." That gave me ideas. "Hey, maybe we could capture some of them."

"What?" Bert asked slowly, easing over to look at me.

"For experiments, I mean. We could figure out what kills them, what they have aversions for."

"Toro would like that."

"Mm."

I was finally awake enough to get out of bed. Actually, my want for coffee had finally gotten strong enough to overrule my want to stay in bed. Bert eased himself up in that slow, aching way he had and sat on the edge of the mattress, rubbing his temples and groaning himself into a more wakeful state. I picked up the empty beer bottle from the floor and opened the door to my room.

Mikey was just passing back down the hall. "Hey, brother."

"Hi, brother. Is somebody making coffee?"

"Breakfast. I hope Matt's making coffee."

I followed Mikey out into the kitchen, where Matt was putting bread in the toaster, eggs and bacon sizzling in the pan behind him. "Hey, Gerard. I raided your frige, hope you don't mind."

"You didn't put on any coffee!" I objected, reaching into the cabinet above the coffee maker.

"Oops. Sorry." Matt laughed. "Forgot you're hopelessly addicted."

Bert came into the dining room, his eyes still half-closed. "Did they make coffee? I could really use some coffee, I would love some coffee..."

"No, they're not as insane as we are."

"Come on, you guys," Bert complained, sitting down at the table.

"You're insane, too? I feel for you, man," said Matt, manning the frying pan again. "Actually, no I don't. But I am sorry for you."

Toro entered the room then, looking clean and awake, his hair slightly damp near his temple, as though he had just washed his face.

"Toro, what do you think about going back to that warehouse and capturing some of the living dead there? For experimentation," I asked.

"Ah, to find out their weaknesses?"

I nodded.

"Yes, I do like that idea. However, we may have to wait a few nights..."

"Yeah, the police might be watching the place," agreed Mikey.

"But it is an intriguing idea," said Toro, his hand resting on his chin. "How exactly would we capture them, and where would we keep them?"

We discussed the whole deal over breakfast. The ultimate plan was that we would capture them, bind them somehow, and yes, we would throw dead bodies in the trunk, again. Frank and Mikey's house had a basement with basically nothing in it, so we decided to lock them down there. There was some question about the humanity of what we were doing. But then we weren't certain these things were human, or at least that they were any more. We weren't certain they could even feel pain. I don't think they can. Or if they do, it's not pain like we feel it. I think what they feel is more of a sense of injury, a vague idea that what just happened to them damaged them in some way. I don't think they actually experience pain. Only the concept. Toro was a little put out that the living dead would not be stored in his house; he desperately wanted to perform experiments on them. For many parts of our conversation, his eyes were glazed over as though he was considering all of the different things he could try on them. Frank said he was welcome at his and Mikey's house whenever, which Toro appreciated. Matt shivered at the idea of zombies in his basement... technically, he lived in his basement, which wasn't really his, but his parents'. He was hoping to save enough money to go to college, and by not spending any on rent, he hoped to reach his goal faster.

"You guys are going to have the creepiest basement in the history of ever," Bert informed Frank and Mikey, steadily rolling the empty beer bottle from last night between his hands.

It was decided. We would keep track of the local news, in case they mentioned us or at least the gunshots from last night, and in three days, if all appeared calm, we would venture out to the warehouse for more zombies. We would bring duct tape, which we intended to use in excess, and pistols, which we hoped to use not at all. My and Toro's cars would be used, as Frank's was still in Toro's garage and he didn't want to risk driving it with it's current license plates. We did still have the stolen Camaro...but we would be insane to actually use it for this. Toro said he had a friend who could possibly acquire new plates for both vehicles. Frank was talking about getting his old Camaro repainted. Not the new one, though. It was just too hot.

"You think it's safe to go outside?" Mikey asked, leaning to look out my window as though he expected to see policemen searching for us on the street.

"Probably. Only one guy saw us, right?"

"Yeah, that cop by the door. And he didn't say he recognized us," mused Frankie.

"And it was dark," Toro agreed. "He probably doesn't know."

"We're probably okay," said Mikey, a little skeptically. "Besides, I need to go to work."

"Okay."

I agreed to drive Mikey and Frank to their house. Bert tagged along, although his house was completely out of my way, he insisted I take him there anyway. Matt and Toro lived not near each other, but on the same side of town, so they traveled together as well.

Mikey sprinted to his door when I reached his house, frantic not to be late for work. Frank followed at a more leisurely pace, having nothing else to do the rest of the day and looking forward to long hours of boredom.

Bert and I spent an unnecessary hour driving around the city, listening to the radio and talking about the living dead we had hunted the night before. We got coffee and hung out in the music store for a while. We skipped lunch; neither of us had brought much money, and neither of us could afford to spend any anyway. We did pause outside, and then briefly inside, a bar, watching the newscast on the small TV there. A blonde woman was standing outside the empty warehouse, explaining that the police had gone to investigate the building after reports of gunfire around nine thirty in the evening. They were aware of several hostiles being present at the scene, but they had escaped before the police could capture them. They had not made positive identification of the subjects, although one of them was reportedly short and claimed to be rich, and another had thick, curly hair. I was relieved those were the best descriptions the police had come up with. There were lots of short people, and lots of people with thick curly hair. They weren't about to arrest us. The woman went on to advise that one of the hostiles reportedly had a machine or possibly sub machine gun and that the building was not to be approached under any circumstances. I noticed then that the building had been cordoned off; the yellow tape flashed in the wind behind her back.

I returned Bert to his house then. He waved goodbye as he stepped out my door. "Hey, if you find any more zombies or anything, call me, okay?"

"Yeah, okay," I answered.

He grinned and slammed the door. I watched him walk up the pathway to his large front door. Bert's house had probably been very nice about two hundred years ago. Or at least, before he started living in it.

I shifted into first again, feeling a fierce wave of depression threatening to pull me under. I was returning to an empty house, nothing to do until I went to work in another few nights, no one to talk to.

I need a girlfriend.

I was calling almost before I knew what I was doing, or who's number I was dialing.

"Hey, in trouble all ready?"

"Hey, Frank. Can I come over for a while?"

"Sure. I'm not doing anything."

"Okay, I'll see you in a minute."

"Suffering from post-kill depression?" Frank asked slyly as I dropped my coat on the floor in the entryway.

"More or less," I muttered, coming in and letting myself fall on the couch next to him. Midday news reports played on the TV screen. Boring, and uninteresting, as midday news reports usually were. It took me several moments to realize that I should be paying attention in case they were talking about us, but just as I realized this, the screen went black.

"I've been watching for at least an hour," Frank said casually, reaching forward for something on the coffee table. "No sign of us." "Bert and I saw a report in a bar," I responded. "They only got vague descriptions for you and Toro; they aren't even certain how many of us were there last night." Frank eyed me quizzically as I said this, probably wondering why Bert and I had been in a bar.

"Awesome," he said casually. He tossed an Xbox controller into my lap. "Race you."

I felt a smile spread slowly across my face. I had made the right choice in coming here. "Game on."

_Share with me_

_'Cause I need it right now_

_Let me see your insides_

**Hey, Killjoys! So, this is it. We have come to the end (FEAR NOT! Not the end of the story! :D ) of the pre-written part of The Way of the W****alking Dead. I have some more ideas, but I'm not exactly sure yet which I'm going to use or in what order. There will be more, but the updates may not come as rapidly as they have before. Because...well, because I have to start writing again now :P I will try to be fast, but I can't promise. Creative writing doesn't like being pushed. **

**Much thanks again to Truthful Blasphemy - your reviews inspire me and keep me wanting to write. Hey to all of Blasphemy's friends reading this now - I hope you guys like it! **

**Love to everyone - blast it to the backrow!**

**xoxo,**

**Rebel Rose**


	8. And as We Ran from the Cops

**Bonjour, Killjoys! Behold, I have an update. And I...actually could have updated this WAY sooner (...hrhm. No pun intended.), because I wrote this in the summer as well. But...I wasn't sure I wanted to use it. Whatever. I'm using it now. Hope you guys like it! **

AND AS WE RAN FROM THE COPS

Hours later, the house was still filled with the sounds of racing engines and screeching tires, and Frank and I shouting at each other.

Frank's cell phone rang. He tried to grab it while still playing and crashed dramatically.

"Dang it," he complained, snatching his phone and pushing the answer button. "Hey, whassup? ...Toro, hey!" Then Frank's cheerful demeanor suddenly dropped; I could feel tension emanating from him. My heart started to race. "We're moving, talk later, bye!" Frank threw down his Xbox controller and leaped off the couch.

"What?" I asked, standing as well.

"Toro says the police have identified me, they're probably coming to this house right now!"

"Shit," I cursed, dropping my controller on the couch and running for the door. Frank was rushing around the house, searching for his shoes, his jacket, his wallet.

"Come on, we haven't got time, let's go!" I said impatiently from the door.

"Let's move," he said, grabbing his coat off the rack.

We ran from the house; I sprinted down the driveway to my car while Frank fumbled with his keys in the door. I turned my own key in the ignition of my old Subaru. The engine didn't exactly roar. "Oh, this is not a good getaway vehicle," I groaned as Frank threw open the passenger door.

"Let's go," he said, reaching for his seat belt.

I was already pulling out of the driveway, spinning the wheel, jumping the clutch, trying to maintain a natural speed while simultaneously trying to move as quickly as possible.

"This shouldn't be a problem, this isn't a problem," Frank was chanting to himself. "We'll just hide out somewhere for a while, no problem..." He suddenly grabbed his phone and clicked the button. "Hey, Toro?"

There was a short pause. "Come back?"  
"How d'you know they're looking for me?"

"Because, I saw a mug shot of you on the news about three minutes ago, they identified you by name and said the police were on it..."

As he was saying this, a cop car came into my field of vision. "Fuck," I whispered, watching the car intently. We passed each other at casual speeds. I quickly looked away from the car, hoping we didn't look as suspicious as I felt we did. They drove passed without incident.

I glanced in my rearview, wanting to see if they pulled up to Frank and Mikey's house.

I saw them park next to the driveway. The passenger door opened and one of the cops emerged. He began to walk up the drive.

"Toro, Toro, a cop literally just passed us. He's about to knock on my door now," Frank quailed.

"Where are you?"

"In Gerard's car. We're running. We don't know where, but we've got to run."

"Run somewhere close. They might recognize Gerard's car."

"I doubt it," I muttered, turning right onto a larger street. A green stop light was ahead of us. We had this.

But then something caught my eye in the rearview. Blue flashing lights.

"Shit," I hissed. "Frank..."

Frank threw himself around, glaring at the cop car through the back windshield. "Those dirty, filthy, cheating..."

The green light blinked yellow. I didn't really think, just slammed my foot to the floor.

"Gerard!" Frank screamed as we raced across the intersection.

Sirens started to blare behind us.

"This isn't going to work out," said Frank as I swung us hard onto another street. "We need my car, something faster."

"The cops know your car."

"And now they know yours. At least mine has torque."

I glanced back in the mirror. The cops were pulling onto the street behind us. Gaining on us. "You're right. Toro's."

Tires screeched as I swung us to the left onto another large street. Once again I found myself raging about the unfairness of these chases. We had to dodge traffic at high speed, while the cop simply blared his sirens and the people moved aside.

Frank was naturally a hyper person, and this adrenaline only meant that he needed to scream at someone.

"TORO!" he shouted into his cell phone.

"This's Toro, come back."

"We're being PURSUED!"

There was a short pause. "I can hear that." Another short pause, and then his voice came again, sounding more intense. "What is your position?"

"Um..."

"Twenty-fourth and Bernard Street!" I shouted, crossing another intersection several seconds after the light turned red. I heard screeching tires behind us and glanced in the mirror. I saw a solid wall of cars in the intersection; blue lights appeared occasionally in between them. We had more time.

"We're moving...Gerard, take a right." Tires screeched, horns blared around us. I cut some people off. Several people flipped me off. "Okay, we're on Rosedale."

"High class," Toro muttered. "Hang on. I'll find assistance."

"Assistance," Frank muttered as I heard the sirens again. But they were distant. I thought maybe back at the stop light we had lost him out. Briefly lost him.

I swung a hard left onto a street called Grant. The more times I changed direction, the less chance there would be of him catching up. Or at least I hoped so.

I pulled onto another large street and slowed to a normal speed. I couldn't hear the sirens anymore.

"Frank, I think we're okay," I said. I flexed my fingers on the wheel; my hands were stiff from gripping it so tightly.

"Maybe," Frank quietly answered. I could hear his breathing starting to slow. "Okay. Maybe we should just abandon, run, find a parking garage."

"Position?" came Toro's voice from the walkie.

"Um, just pulled off Grant...almost to Tourist," Frank said, squinting through the windshield at the street sign above the intersection. "But it's okay, I think we lost..."

The whine of sirens filled my ears.

"Damn it!" I shouted, seeing the cop car nearly right behind us.

"How! Why?" Frank was shouting randomly. "And when...?"

I shouted and dodged to the left as another car, on Tourist, came racing toward us, nearly slamming into us. I glanced in the rearview beyond the intersection, and saw the car circling around the stopped police car. I thought the guy in the driver seat looked familiar.

"Holy crap..."

"Was that just...?"

"Mikey?"

"I think we're safe now."

Frank started laughing. I heard engines roaring behind us, and loud sirens, saw flashing blue lights, but quietly I started laughing too.

"Tell Toro we're coming for your car. Ask him if he can have it running?"

"No problem," said Frank, and quickly relayed the information.

I changed streets again, turning left, knowing Toro's house was in the opposite direction we'd been traveling and I needed to make up the ground. Just as I turned I thought I saw more blue lights on the horizon. More squad cars. "Oh, this is not fair," I complained as we pulled onto the next street and I floored the engine, racing in the opposite direction from before. A light turned yellow ahead of us but I raced across the intersection anyway.

We were almost slammed by another car again. The other car.

"Mikey!" I shouted. I caught a glimpse of him as we passed, and he was grinning. Now he was behind us, rapidly pulling level.

Frank was contacting Toro. "Ray! Dude! What was that?"

"I presume that means your backup arrived?"

"Yes! Dude—"

"Tell him we need more," I interrupted, gazing at the lights in the rearview mirror.

"How far are you from my house?" Toro was asking.

Frank breathed slowly, trying to remain calm at the sight of the four police cars following us. "We're about...maybe... Whoa, Gerard, don't do that!" he screamed as I slammed on the brakes and swung to the left, trying to avoid death. "Probably fifteen minutes or so."

"Okay. I'll be waiting. Don't have the cops with you when you come."

"How are we supposed to do that?" Frank exclaimed to me, throwing his phone down.

I glanced to the right. "Call Mikes."

* * *

We still had no idea how we were going to throw the cops long enough to escape, while Mikey led them in another direction. We needed to disappear.

The answer presented itself in the middle of the suburbs, in the form of the only open garage door on the street.

I had hardly seen it before I was turning into the driveway. Frank shouted as we came into the garage, my car's lame brakes nearly crashing us into the wall.

"The door, get the door!" I shouted frantically.

We both leapt from the car and ran for the garage door, pulling it down simultaneously. I saw Mikey race by outside as the door closed.

"Nice move, guys," I heard him say, his voice emanating from the speakers of my phone.

I raised the phone to my mouth. "Thanks," I said, still gasping for air. Frank and I looked at each other and laughed nervously.

"This is so bad," Frank whispered.

"This is terrible," I agreed while still laughing.

"Ron?"

We both froze. But the house was empty, the house was empty, the car was gone...

"Hey, hon, you're home early..."

We both looked up and our eyes met the frightened, painted eyes of a large, middle-aged woman standing in the doorway from house to garage.

I expected her to scream and run. Not exactly what happened.

"OUT! GET OUT!"

"Um..."

"We're going!" I promised. "Frank, open the door..."

"GET OUT OF MY GARAGE! GET LOST! WHEN MY HUSBAND GETS HOME, HE'S GONNA TAN YOUR HIDE..."

I threw myself back into the car, thankful that it was still running.

"Trust me, ma'am, you're aiding the public with this..." said Frank as he threw himself into the passenger's seat.

"Yeah, thanks for letting us use your garage," I added, pulling backwards.

"You! Wait'll my husband hears! I'm gonna call the police!"

"The police are already on it, ma'am," Frank answered.

I pushed in the clutch and we coasted rapidly down the driveway and back onto the main road. I shifted quickly, accelerated faster. I saw a cop car ahead of us just turning right at the next intersection. Good. We needed to go left.

I glanced across at Frank, the sudden silence and lack of urgency feeling strange after racing around the city and being kicked out of a garage by a large woman in floral print.

Frank glanced at me and we both turned back to the front. This was insane. And we weren't even free yet.

"Mikey, you still got them on your tail?" Frank asked cautiously over his cell.

"Still running," Mikey promised. "I would advise you hurry, I see more cop cars in the distance…"

"Great," I whispered, turning to the left, the last street separating us from Toro's.

He was waiting for us on the street, Frank's car parked on the curb beyond the driveway, the driver door open and engine running. Toro was standing near the car, the urgency of our situation reflected in his face. He gestured us up into his empty garage.

This time I did crash into the garage's back wall.

"Sorry," I apologized, glancing in the rearview and seeing Toro wince.

Frank and I ran down the grassy verge to the car. I paused to thank Toro.

"Where are you going to go?" Toro asked.

"I…have no idea," I admitted, only just realizing that myself. "We could…"

"It doesn't matter," said Frank, sounding secure. I glanced at him with an eyebrow raised. "Who needs to hide?" he shrugged. "All we have to do is outrun." And he grinned as he said it.

I glanced back at Toro, Frank's security washing over me, making me feel somewhat more safe. "I guess we're running," I said.

Toro nodded, pleased, and made a small gesture with his hands as if to say, _Well, stop standing here and run! _I turned, prepared to throw myself into the driver's seat, but Frank was standing by the door, holding it open for me. He gave me another grin as I realized he wanted to drive. Frank's need-for-speed grin. This was going to be fun.

I threw myself across the leather seat, Frank ducking in just behind me. He turned to wave cheerily to Toro as he depressed the clutch.

"Be safe," Toro warned, watching Frank shift with wary eyes. "Don't get arrested."

"I'll try," Frank responded. He was too happy. I could feel his adrenaline, infecting me like a disease as he paused, one foot on the clutch, one on the brake, his hands wrapped comfortably around the wheel. "Let's go," he whispered, and released the clutch.

The engine roared, Frank spun the wheel to the right, and we pulled into the street, screeching tires, engine roaring. Velocity was immediately attained.

Oh yes. Frank's car was much nicer than mine.

I don't know how we escaped. How we avoided detection escaping Toro's house, how we drew the cops away from Mikey long enough for him to escape back home. He borrowed the car from someone. I have no idea who.

It was late when Frank and I pulled back up to Toro's house.

Toro let us into his living room. The news was on.

"Have they reported us?" I asked.

Toro shook his head. "I've had the news on screen since you left. No reports."  
I glanced at Frank, sharing a quick look of relief. How could we be this lucky?

"Is Mikey home?" I asked Frank.

Frank grabbed his walkie and raised it to his mouth. I mentally slapped myself for not realizing I could have easily done the same. I was exhausted from the chase. The hunt. The running. I felt as though I had physically run the miles we had traversed in Frank's car.

"Hey, Mikes, how's home?"

He let up on the button and waited for Mikey's response. Several seconds passed.

Frank raised the walkie again. "Mikey, how's home, come back."

The silence was loud. Like pressure against my eardrums.

Frank raised the walkie again.

A quick burst of static almost made him drop the walkie, and Mikey's voice filled the living room. "Sorry, what were you saying, come back?"

"Mikey. Don't freak me out like that, man. How's the house?"

"Empty. Lonely. I'm the only one here."

"Any cops come by?"

We all listened intently to his answer.

"One car drove by earlier about five minutes after I got in. He didn't stop. The street's been quiet for hours."

Frank looked up at me again, the stress of pursuit gone from his face. "I guess I can go home then."

"Home," I murmured.

I drove, hyper-aware of every adjustment I made in the steering, every time I tapped the brakes. I wondered each time if what I was doing looked abnormal, but at the same time I was too exhausted to care. I dropped Frank off at his house, having a flashback of that morning, when we had thought we were safe. I suppose we think we're safe now. Don't we? I can't tell. I'm too exhausted.

I drove back to my house with the radio on but turned way down. I only wanted background noise, other voices, to prove I wasn't alone.

The house was dark. The garage was empty. There were no signs of the police having come while I was gone, although I didn't really look. I didn't really care. I fumbled the keys into the lock and entered the house.

I shrugged off my coat. My keys clattered on the floor as I dropped them with my jacket. I started to cross the room, but my eyes fell on the couch, so much more attractive than the long walk to my room. I circled around and fell onto it fully dressed, not even taking off my shoes. I shivered a little, but was asleep before I could get up and search for a blanket.

**_Well it rains and it pours_**

**_When you're out on your own._**

**_If I crash on the couch_**

**_Can I sleep in my clothes?_**

**btw, I apologize for the more-than-usual amount of cuss words. I wrote this in the summer :P And I felt like the boys needed those words. Also...has anyone seen Summer-time Rose? I'M GOING TO STRANGLE HER! **

**xoxo, pulling-on-fingerless-gloves-for-strangling,**

**Rebel Rose**


	9. Teenagers

**Can someone explain the weird combination of Kill All Your Friends and WTH (by Avril Lavigne) that's stuck in my head? XD**

TEENAGERS

We waited for days.

And they dragged. The haunting, lonely days, deprived of excitement and exploration, deprived of undead enemies to take down seemed completely endless, like God was testing our nerves making the time drag slower. If we hadn't been waiting for that window to go on the hunt again, it probably wouldn't have seemed as bad.

The days finally amounted to a week. In that week I had done nothing but go to work at night and watch the news, carefully waiting, hoping, for news of the building. _It's pointless_, I told myself. _It's not important. A few gun shots in an abandoned building; the authorities probably just thought we were random teenagers out having a good time._

But those thoughts did little to calm my mind, for they were immediately followed with, _Not so. They know we had a sub-machine gun._ And there was the zombie that had fallen through the glass after I shot him. Right as the police arrived.

Can news casters read thoughts? Just as that particular undead entered my mind, the news lady started a new report. And it was about a dead man apparently shot and pushed through an upper window in an abandoned building. The authorities had been unable to locate a corpse, however. (_Weird, _I thought. _It freaking survived?_) And they were letting the investigation go, blowing it off as teenagers having fun.

The report continued, but I was dead to the lady's words. They thought we were teenagers. Teenagers! They were blowing us off as angst-ridden, gun-wielding teenagers! I shuddered as I went to refill my cup with coffee. Teenagers scare the living shit out of me.

I was going to call Frank immediately and tell him about the police abandoning their search, but my phone rang just as I lifted it. Toro was calling.

He had heard the same as I had.

So now we were free. It was time to go and capture the living dead.

Our first attempts to capture the living dead were less than fruitful.

I cannot tell you how many times we tried, we worked at it that much. The hard part is avoiding killing them while avoiding dying yourself. I have tasted the fetid breath of the walking dead, its rotting face less than an inch from my own, far too many times to ever be capable of forgetting it. I've also nearly been burned alive. It went something like this:

(Me, running for my life) "I may be about to die, but this is seriously working!" I had nearly reached Frankie's car when I was suddenly outrun by the walking dead. The running dead. It was fast. Faster than I had expected. I was caught.

I knew I was beyond hope the moment I felt its moist hand grasp my shirt. I knew it would capture me. Despite its weak and rotting flesh, it's grip was like iron. It pulled me in with a drawn-out moan. I could hear Frank shouting my name repeatedly, though it hardly registered in my brain that the name belonged to me. I stared into the face of the dead.

I have also far too often experienced the sensation of fetid meat spattering over my face as someone blasted a zombie skull with a bullet. Not a pleasant sensation.

Worse was the fire, the sudden blaze that burst up in front of me. "Frank!" I shouted, grasping the walking dead by the arms, unable to break its grip and grimly waiting for it to release me. Frank was shouting again, but I didn't hear any of his words.

I always thought the dead burn quickly. I have changed my mind. The burning of the dead is one of the slowest operations on the face of the planet. The fires spread across its chest, slow enough for me to study its steady progress. Had my own chest not been so close, the fire wouldn't have mattered to me quite so much. I strained back from its arms, but its grip was tight.

So I stood still as the flames approached, finally roaring down the arms of the walking dead in a great rush. My own arms burned with a smoldering pain.

And then there was nothing left of the dead but ash swirling in small circles in the faint breeze. The warehouse was suddenly silent. Smoke was rising from the blue sleeves of my baseball shirt, black-edged holes revealing burned skin on both my arms. My face and chest were spattered in gore. I looked up at Frankie, who was looking back at me apologetically. "Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to blow him up."

So yes. That's why it's hard to capture the living dead. Sometimes they capture you. And a lot of times you destroy them before you can successfully incapacitate them.

We tried other ways of capturing them. Matt suggested we could use torches and surround them. Yeah, not so much. The living dead are not actually afraid of fire. I don't think they have instincts telling them that fire is, like, the only thing that can harm them and that they should stay away. No. The first zombie practically walked into the torch Matt was holding in its eagerness to get to him. I shot it before it could reach him.

Frank wanted to try fire extinguishers. That didn't work either. The result was Frank running for his life and having to explain to his boss later why the fire extinguisher was missing from their workplace.

So what is the best way to capture the walking dead?

The way you always capture someone before throwing them in your trunk. Duct tape.

"Would somebody please remind me why this is a good idea?" Bert asked with a slightly frantic note to his usually calm voice.

"Come on, Bert, no zombie would want to eat you," Frank promised, trying to find the end of a roll of duct tape. "You're too meager, and too wasted."

"Well I think we should use you, no zombie would want you. You're too _short_."

That struck a nerve.

"I am not short! I'm five foot four, I'm NOT SHORT!"

"Okay, Frank," I said, trying to calm him down (without success) as I went to retrieve the duct tape he had just dropped before chasing after Bert. Poor Bert.

"Stop messing around, I see one," said Toro sternly.

Frank and Bert froze in their tracks and we all stared, silent and still, at the walking dead just across the room.

We were in a new part of the abandoned building downtown, a large room similar to the storage room by the loading dock. We were gathered near the double doors on one side. The dark shadowy form of one of the walking dead could just be discerned on the other side near the opposite doorway. The shadows were deep, and our only proof of its presence came in small movements of deeper shadow and the inevitable shuffling made by long-dead feet.

"Okay," I whispered. "We need to go. Frank…"

Frank came towards me, reaching for the duct tape, while Bert walked with casual ease towards the center of the room, taking no trouble to disguise his movements. The living dead looked up.

"Try not to get bitten," Mikey warned me.

"Actually," said Toro, looking up from his gun sights. "It would be fairly interesting to see what happens to a wound inflicted by the walking dead."

I gave him a hard look.

"Though not one inflicted upon you," he amended, returning to the sights of his gun. "But Gerard, if you have to get bitten, I'd rather it was in the arm. Easy access for examination."

"I'll try to remember that," I promised sarcastically.

Frank grasped the end of the duct tape and pulled several feet of tape free. "Let's move," he whispered.

The walking dead had seen Bert. It was hard not to. I was staring at him, watching him make a scene as only Bert could. He wasn't doing anything absurd, just walking. He drew the eyes without even trying.

Frank and I stepped around him just as the walking dead was growing near, lifting the duct tape over his head and then dropping it low. About wrist level.

And then we were behind the walking dead, which at this point was no longer walking, not understanding, not comprehending, what was happening. Which gave us time to entrap him more completely. In moments we had his arms tight. He was roaring in frustration. Bert snatched a piece of our duct tape and smacked it over its mouth.

We bound its legs and carried it out into the storage area below the loading dock. Then Toro backed his car carefully down the incline. He popped the trunk and got out to help us.

After several moments of heaving and wrestling with dead bloated weight, we had the walking dead in the trunk. We all stood still around the car, suddenly comprehending our success. We had done it. We had captured one of the walking dead.

"Well done, boys," Toro said after a moment. "Let's go lock it in the basement."

In this way, we managed to capture three of the walking dead and lock them in separate cages in Frank and Mikey's basement. Frank and Mikey's basement was now officially the creepiest basement in the city. Toro was given unlimited access to that basement, and therefore a set of spare keys to the house.

And that was how we captured the walking dead.

**This chapter is kind of uninteresting. I'm sorry. I've been trying to psyche myself up for writing this again by watching lots of older MCR videos and stuff. What I have succeeded in doing is obsessing myself with Bert McCracken. And the words "haute couture." ;) So I may soon publish a crack fic of stuff that I wrote in this fic originally, but that grew into it's own story that no longer belongs with this fic. I will say only that it is ridiculous, it has more Bert than this one, and there are droids. Like battle droids from Star Wars. XD**

**Anybody else think Bert's Killjoy name should be Wax Butterfly?**

**What I must do, as soon as I go back home (I'm visiting my aunt for a week right now), is roleplay with my brothers. That is exactly how I came up with all of the craziness that's in WE TRY TO GET ARRESTED, the jail scene (a lot of the roleplaying didn't get used, but the two guys in Mikey's cell are my brothers! :P ), and INVISIBLE SQUADRONS & CURES FOR INSANITY. My brothers also came up with the idea of a zombie throwing it's arm at Mikey and Frank XD The scenes and incidents are mostly my ideas, but I wouldn't come up with the details without the inspiration from my brothers. **

***looks up at what she just wrote* Whoaaa...okay, that was a longer-than-usual author's note. D: Okay. I will go back to hyping myself up and trying to think of more scenes for you guys. Hopefully my next update will be BETTER.**

**Stay loud and just don't let go,**

**xoxo,**

**Rebel Rose**

**who wants nothing better than to lend some comfort to the eternally-pained Wax Butterfly. :)**


	10. The Taste of Lead

**Hey, guys :) **

THE TASTE OF LEAD

Ladies and gentlemen, it's time for you all to meet Michael Broder, an officer on the police force. He has had a personal vendetta against My Chemical Romance ever since Bert...well...

"Hey, you freaks out there, this is Officer Broder calling all of the force, the fugitives are west-bound and traveling into suburbia, over."

"Copy, Broder, I am making my pursuit now."

Broder, or rather Bert, grinned and gave a self-congratulatory laugh. He had stolen Broder's name, Broder's clothes, and now he was about to steal his car. He was still chuckling to himself as he placed his foot on the gas pedal. The headlights were out and he was only waiting for the other officers to pass by on the street in front of him before he left the alleyway to follow Gerard. Me. I was traveling east just outside of downtown. With Toro. And we had a zombie in the trunk.

"This is not cool!"

And Frank was in the back seat, shouting at Toro as the madman made a hard right and Frank was thrown from one side of the car to the other.

"Bert, where are the cops?" I asked over my walkie as Toro drove us at wild speeds down another street.

"Looking for Broder." Bert laughed extensively. "They're never gonna find him! They're driving right towards the square now."

It was rather unfortunate that at that moment, the real officer Broder, shivering in his undershirt, stepped out of the alleyway Bert had left him in right in front of an oncoming police car. "Broder!" the officer exclaimed, slamming on his brakes. Broder didn't even wince as the car skidded to a screeching halt directly in front of him. The angry officer driving the car leaned out his open window and started yelling. "What are you doing out here? You just told us you sighted the fugitives!"

"Oh, I sighted them all right," Broder said sarcastically, throwing open the passenger door and climbing in. "Sighted them, boxed with them, lost..."

"What do you mean you lost—ooh," said the officer, drawing back suddenly as Broder looked at him and light fell on his fabulous black eye.

"Just step on it," Broder snapped, turning back to the front and hugging himself for warmth.

"Which way did they leave?"

"I don't—"

It was at that moment that another squad car passed them going in the opposite direction. The officer inside waved at them. An officer wearing Broder's badge.

"Hey!" Broder shouted.

"I'm on him! I...argh!" The officer shouted as another car pulled suddenly in front of them, cutting off their pursuit of the other cop car, which was blazing passed the shop fronts downtown. The driver of the older car gave an apologetic wave as he passed by. The man had a large, red afro.

Broder ground his teeth in frustration, banging his fists on his knees.

…Well, yeah. That's why he's mad. We stole his clothes and his car and his reputation. So now he wants revenge.

Frank and I were driving through the strip in Frank's resurrected Camaro. Ray had just acquired the new plates he had promised, and Frank, though Ray and I both objected this as insanity, insisted we take his car today. Where were we going exactly? It's kind of confidential, so don't speak of it, ever, but we were going to a small gun dealer on the far end of the strip that was interested in supplying us with more incendiaries. And he also had something special for us, Ray had added as we left his house. He wouldn't tell us what it was.

When the sirens came on behind us, neither of us was really surprised.

"What have I done now?" Frank complained, flipping on his turn signal to pull off to the side.

"It's Broder," I said, glancing in the rearview.

"Are you sure?"

"Dead sure. He doesn't look happy."

"You mean like maybe he's not taking us out for a real reason, but just for spite?"

We glanced at each other, our eyes reflecting the other's emotions.

"Fuck it," Frank said with a deep, heavy breath, and he pulled off to the side.

"At least he caught us now, before we filled your car with contraband," I said, glancing in the rearview again to watch Broder approaching us.

Frank was banging his head against the wheel when Officer Broder appeared by his window.

"Sir?"

"Yes?" Frank straightened up suddenly and faced him without fear.

Broder looked surprised and slightly taken aback. "May I see your license and registration, please?"

"What did you stop me for?" Frank demanded none too kindly. I would have played nicer, considering Broder had nothing on us and no choice but to let us go.

"I'm not required to tell you that information..."

"I have rights, Broder, tell me why you stopped me or you don't see my license."

"I have reason to suspect that one of your lights isn't working."

"My lights aren't on."

"Yes, and I suspect that they aren't working, so if you would hand me your license and registration, and turn on your lights, that would be great."

Frank turned slowly towards me, his hands clenched on the wheel, his face expressing a tense mixture of anger, sarcasm, and annoyance. I reached forward to find Frank's registration in the dash. Frank flipped Broder his license without deigning to look at him, then snatched the registration papers from me and handed them over as well. Broder muttered a thank you and walked away from the window, back toward his squad car.

Frank turned to me again, rolling his eyes. He started to open his mouth to say something –

"Turn your lights on, Mr. Iero!" Broder called irritably from the back of the car.

Frank flipped his lights on and bounced his foot on the brake a couple times. "All working?" he called in exasperation, shaking his head at me as though to say, "He's wasting my time and his and this is completely ridiculous."

There was a longish pause. I could imagine Broder struggling with himself as he now faced telling Frank that he was in fact perfect.

"You're good," he said after a moment, and I saw him walking back to his car.

Broder took an unnecessarily _long_ time checking the validity of Frank's license. Frank pointedly turned on the radio and raised the volume obnoxiously, blasting the White Stripes over the entire strip.

Broder came back to the window, looking irritable. "Stop that," he snapped, and Frank turned down the stereo, looking smug. "Here is your license," Broder said, passing the small card through the window. "And here is your…registration." He winced, holding the paper back a little, as though he couldn't stand the idea of Frank possessing the rights to own and operate a car as awesome as this.

Frank reached out and snatched the registration from Broder's hands.

"Right," said Broder as Frank folded the paper. "Um, so…carry on. And keep your lights on. And keep that music down!"

"Right, Broder," Frank responded. "Thanks." He leaned across me to slip the registration back into the dash himself. Broder was still waiting outside the window when he straightened back up.

Frank waved a hand at him irritably. "If you don't mind, officer, you're in my way. And don't you have better things to do?"

Broder grudgingly stepped to the side, grumbling to himself as Frank shifted to reverse and pulled us smoothly backwards back onto the road.

"Watch the lights!" Broder warned threateningly.

Frank ignored him, cranking the stereo again.

The gun shop was small, as Toro had said, and located at the far end of the strip, on the right hand side. The owner's name was Daniel. Like Toro, he had been in the military and was out on honorable discharge.

"I was a ground man," he explained to us as we gathered in his backroom, several cases of incendiaries on the counter in front of us. "Many is the time that I've run into a firefight on Toro's directions."  
"Toro said you had something special for us?" Frank asked. "He wouldn't tell us what it was."

Daniel's eyes lit up at the mention of the word _special_. "Yes. Come over here."  
He led us farther back among boxes and boxes of weapons and weapon paraphernalia. I found myself imagining what it would be like to hunt the living dead with any one of these things.

He stopped near the back wall and reached up onto the shelf. What he took down was an unlabeled box. "You're going to like this," he promised, and led us back to the counter. He set the box down and began to pull it open.

I found myself subconsciously leaning closer.

The box contained a single, gleaming .22 caliber rifle. The stock and other attachments were polished wood, all the metal jet black.

Daniel lifted the rifle out of the box and handed it to me.

"Impressive," I said automatically, taking the weapon and studying the hardware. I was more interested in the artistic aspect of the weapon, finding myself admiring the shining polish of the wood, the glint of light that flashed off the black barrel.

"You may also like this," said Daniel, ducking below the counter for a moment. I handed Frank the rifle, which he promptly raised to his eye, studying a distant target through the sites. "This," said Daniel, straightening back up. He was holding a scope.

"Nice," I said, taking it and examining it.

Frank lowered the rifle and lifted it back into the box. "This is awesome, man," he said.

"How much do you want for all this?" I asked.

"Normally," Daniel said, stepping back from the counter a little, "I'd run your several thousand. But, Toro," he shrugged, "he's a friend. Saved my hide a number of times. So just pay for the incendiaries...I need my black market reimbursement for those. I'll give you the rifle."

Wow. That was nice.

"Thanks, man," I said, looking back at the rifle again. "So…"

"Three hundred for the incendiaries," he said. "And I've also got something for Toro, if you're going to see him…"

"Yeah, he sent money," I said, pulling out my wallet. I had brought four hundred. It was more than I could spare.

"Fifty-two for what I got for him," Daniel said, leaning against the counter and scratching the back of his head.

I placed the hundred Toro had given me on the counter and Daniel ducked below again to find his merchandise while I counted the three hundred for the incendiaries.

Daniel placed a box of hollow points on the counter with a clatter. "Police issue. Very few people can acquire these."

I glanced at him, wondering if the guy knew what we were planning to do with these bullets. That we intended to fill animate corpses with them. "Did Toro tell you what we intend to use this stuff for?" I asked him carefully.

Daniel held up his hands. "I don't know, and I don't need to. What I don't know, I can't tell the cops if I'm interrogated. So long as they're not people…and I trust Toro enough to know it's not that…I don't need to know what you're doing with my weapons."

"Thanks," I said gratefully.

Frank drove his car around to the back of the building and Daniel helped us load the rifle and new incendiaries into the trunk. This was getting better. I was starting to feel as though we were actually serious. Like this was really working. We were really hunting the walking dead. And we were succeeding at it.

It was on the drive back to Toro's that we saw our next quarry. "Frank, stop!" I shouted suddenly, throwing my arms out, as though that would make him stop.

Frank slammed on the brake and clutch, turning to me worriedly. "What is it, Gee?"

I was already pointing frantically to the sidewalk across the street. "That's one of the walking dead," I stated.

Frank leaned closer to his window, squinting towards the being I had pointed to on the sidewalk. I waited impatiently as he analyzed it. "Yes…are you sure, Gee, I'm not certain…"  
"Look at the way it's walking. And look at its shoulder." Its shoulder was sort of an open wound. Not exactly a trait for a normal, living human being.

"Ah," said Frank, drawing back, at last in accordance with me.

There was a brief pause.

Then we were both scrambling for our weapons, desperate to take it down.

I drew my revolver first, leaning over Frank and cocking it as he lowered the window.

The walking dead walked away. Into a building on the strip.

"What?" I exclaimed, unable to comprehend this sudden loss of my enemy.

"That is not right," said Frank, watching the door.

"We've got to follow it," I stated, leaning back into my seat.

A horn blared behind us.

"Hey!" Frank exclaimed, whirling in his seat to give the Finger to the driver waiting impatiently behind us. "We might be in the process of saving your life, you idiot!" He turned back, shifting into first and burning rubber in the guy's face for spite before continuing down the strip. I stared at the door of the building behind which the walking dead had disappeared as Frank drove us past. "We can't go in now, Gee," he said comfortingly.

His words didn't help.

"You said he what?" asked Toro, after we had related what we had seen to him, safely back in his house.

"He frequents the place, I know he does," Frank was saying forcefully. "We've got to go back and destroy him!"

"How?" I asked. I was sitting at the table, my head in my hands. I felt hopeless.

Frank turned to me, excited and full of energy as usual. "Simple. We load up and waltz through the front door, find him, and blast him!"

"It's not that simple, Frank, this is a civil business," said Toro, glancing back at Frank as he prepared the coffee. "What sort of business did you say it was?" he added, seating himself at the table and offering a steaming mug to me. I took it automatically, feeling the heat spread through my perpetually cold hands.

"Like a club or something," said Frank. "Rock club."

"Mm," I mumbled, nodding in agreement as I raised the cup of my precious drug to my lips. The smell and the steam in my face revived me somewhat from my hopeless state.

Toro nodded. I could tell he was thinking of something, something slightly crazy that in his mind sounded sane and logical, but which he knew normal people might react badly to. It has taken me years to realize what that look means. I only know it now because he has stopped giving it to us, and only does it around other people. "Well," he said. "We can't go in as civilians." Even though I couldn't decipher his look at the time, I could tell he was already thinking of the solution, but waiting to see what our reactions would be.

Frank began wandering around the kitchen, unable to stand still any longer. "Why not? And I don't care. What can they do to us? We just need to get in! We could…"

"If we went in as musicians," said Toro. "No one would question us and there would be no risk of being searched. We would also have complete access to the building."

Frank stopped walking. "Dude! That's genius! Only…we aren't exactly musicians. Well, I am, Mikey is, but…"

"I play guitar," Toro stated. "And we don't need to really be capable of playing. We only need to get in…"

"…and we can blow the party later," I interrupted, the brilliance of the idea sinking through my depressed mind. Some tiny part in the back of that mind observed that I must have been spending too much time with Bert, to use the phrase _blow the party_.

"Exactly," said Toro, nodding.

"Well…" said Frank, after a silence which Toro and I spent in speculation, but which he probably spent in tense anxiety. "What are we waiting for? How do we get in? Let's do this!"

I love Frank's enthusiasm.

I called Bert. Bert knew about rock clubs.

Bert also has this little problem with answering his phone. The problem is that he never does. What does he do that prevents him from ever answering his phone when I call?

I tried one more time. This time he picked up.

"Gerard! Dude, what's happening?"

I asked about the club on the strip.

"On the strip? Probably Eddie's. Cool place."

Eddie's. So that was where we had to go.

Saying we were going was easier than making it possible for us to go. Apparently it actually was a popular place. Toro spent nearly an hour on the phone with the club while Frank and I sat on his couch, the news on the screen but neither of us watching it, listening intently to his conversations and talking about the zombie in the long minutes while he was on hold. There were lots of those.

"Yes. Yes," he said. "There are five of us," he said, glancing at me and trying to ask a question with his eyes, the meaning of which I was completely clueless to. He waved his hand in dismissal, leaving me feeling completely useless. "Yes, sir. Yes." Then he paused for the briefest of seconds, as though the man on the other end of the phone had asked a question, the answer to which Toro did not know and was in the process of creating. "My Chemical Romance," he said. "Yes. Any night, but as soon as possible, please. Yes. We are a rock band. Yes, that would be fine. At ten? Certainly. All right, then. Thank you."

He hung up and turned to Frank and me. "Thursday. They expect us to go on at ten. But of course we'll be there early."

_Early_, I thought. I could only hope the walking dead would be there with us.

Bert came over to my house. He was hungry and bored.

"Hey, Bert," I said as I let him in.

"Hey, man," he said, stepping inside quickly; it was unpleasantly cold and rainy outside. His leather coat was covered in water droplets. He shook his hair; it swung wildly, weighted down by water. "How's life?" he asked with a grin, shrugging off his coat and leaving it where it fell.

"Dismal," I responded, following him into my kitchen. I sat at the dining table while he explored what little I had in my refrigerator.

"Haven't killed any zombies recently?" he asked, giving me a knowing smile, his face bathed in the glow from the refrigerator.

I shook my head, flicking a bottle cap across the table.

The next thing to come into my field of vision was a beer bottle, and Bert's hand as he set it on the table in front of me. What? I didn't think, just reached for it numbly; he snatched it back and opened it with his shirt before returning it to me. "Feel better," he said with a smile, as though he were prescribing me some kind of medicine. I stuck my tongue out, just to be defiant, but took a quick swig anyway.

I drank his prescribed medicine while he wandered around the kitchen, taking the most time I have ever seen a person take in making a peanut butter sandwich. He ate several bites of the bread before spreading the peanut butter on it, which almost made me laugh.

His order was working on me psychologically. I was feeling better.

_We'll drink and dance the night away_

_We'll drink and dance the night away_

_The night…_

**Yeah, it's stuck in my head now. :) I am having SUCH hard time writing these updates. I blame it on being away from my brothers and the insanity they inspire from me. I write the best stuff when I'm with them. Eeegh. I'll see them again on Monday. So until then, I must survive...**

**Btw...have you guys seen Summer-time Rose? She's inconspicuously missing... D: What if she's back home with my brothers? Argh! *graps a loud speaker* "Summer-time Rose, you get back here this instant!" **

**Gotta start running and say goodbye.**

**xoxo,**

**Rebel Rose**

_In this sea of lonely_

_The taste of ink is getting old..._


	11. Famous Last Words

FAMOUS LAST WORDS

Oh.

Oh.

I can't think.

All around me was dark; the hall behind, the stage in front.

But there were spotlights. And in the spotlight nearest stood this…

She was perfection.

She was…but she wasn't perfect. No one would say she was perfect. But she was, everything about her was perfect. She had dark hair, jet black, that hung to her shoulders, filthy, like she hadn't washed it for several days. Her skin was exceedingly pale; it seemed to shine under the bright lights from above. She was vampiric…

I can't remember the number of times I've been called a vampire.

I can't remember anything. What is there to remember? Why should I remember anything? What could possibly be worth remembering next to…

"Gerard!"

Someone grasped my shoulder and pulled me around. I stared into a face…I knew this face…the lip ring was vaguely familiar…

"Gerard. What are you doing? Wake up! Do you even remember why we're here?"

Why we're here? What? I don't _care_ why we came, it doesn't matter…

I saw Toro over Frank's shoulder. Something about his hair sparked my mind. "Sorry," I whispered to Frank, not really thinking. I remembered now. Somewhere in this building lurked one of the living dead. We were here to find him.

In the years I've spent hunting the living dead, I've kind of realized that there are two basic types of them walking the city streets. The most common type is the walking dead…they're kind of senseless, they're like, all they see is the need to consume human flesh. Yeah, zombies don't eat brains. I'm sorry, they just don't. They eat flesh and bones and any physical matter they can possibly get between their teeth. And the bite of one of the walking dead does not transform a living human into a living corpse. I know this because…well…Frank got bitten once. But that's a long story.

So, the second type of undead is the _living _dead. They aren't really easy to define – they're not all the same. But, basically, the living dead are the more sophisticated of the animate corpses wandering the city streets. They look more human-like, less decayed, less bloated, less obviously…dead. Some of them can speak. Trust me, that's disturbing.

The undead we had tracked to the rock club was one of the living dead…so, yeah. That was why he was inside this building surrounded by living people and no one recognized his lack of life. I don't know how to explain the open wound on his shoulder. But whatever. The point was he was here. We knew he was here. And no one knew it but us.

The ease with which he eluded the notice of other humans also made it extremely difficult for _us_ to find him. We had arrived on the scene at maybe seven...

…It was nearly nine-thirty now.

Frank left me, heading back towards Toro. I was going to follow him…I told myself to follow him…

I glanced back at the girl.

Oh.

Oh.

I can't think.

She was playing bass guitar in the spot light, her vampire skin gleaming. She was smiling, like playing the music made her happy. Her lead singer was screaming, senselessly screaming... "_STUPID, STUPID MOTHERFUCKER!_"…and she was smiling, banging her head to the music, her fingers rocking the rhythm on her black bass guitar…

"Gee." Frank's voice was just a little sarcastic. So was his expression. "Coming, or what?"

"Yeah," I said blearily, turning away.

I felt completely drunk.

I followed him down the hall.

"Mikey, how's the crowd?" Toro was asking over his walkie as we came into the dressing room that had been assigned to My Chemical Romance. The rock band. Not the zombie hunters. An ironic smile twitched across my face.

"Devoid of undead life," Mikey responded. "Or…unlife. Or whatever."

"Mikey, you…" Toro stopped, looking up.

I looked back, thinking he was staring at Frank. No. The stage manager of Eddie's Rock Bar had just stepped in to stand in the door frame. "Just wanna remind you guys that you're going on right after Mindless Self-Indulgence."

Toro nodded.

"The band that's playing now?" I asked. Frank looked at me inquisitively. I wasn't even thinking.

"Yeah. Jimmy Urine's band," the stage manager said, nonplussed. "So, anyway, like…be ready. You've got like, a half an hour."

He left.

Frank waved his hand dismissively at the guy's back.

Toro slowly raised his walkie back to his mouth and clicked the button. "Mikes, if you would move to the north side, we'll fan out and start searching the rest of the building. Fr – "

Toro jumped as Frank suddenly grabbed his walkie and held it to his own mouth. Toro obviously wasn't used to Frank's randomness. "Mikes, just so you know, we're supposed to go on in about thirty minutes, so we should probably…you know, _leave_…"

"Before then, right," Mikey said. I could imagine him nodding. "I'll move quickly."

"So will we," said Frank with a confident little smile, and released Toro's walkie.

Toro chose not to acknowledge Frank briefly stealing his cell phone, and turned to our instrument cases by the wall.

Only now they were weapons cases.

Frank carefully closed the door to our dressing room, and once the door clicked shut, Toro unclasped the case for his Gibson Les Paul Standard.

The case currently contained three nine millimeter pistols. One of the pistols was missing, tucked in Matt's jacket as he searched near the south wall of the building.

"Frank," Toro said, offering one of the pistols to Frank. Frank took it and immediately grabbed a second.

"I like having eighteen shots," he said to Toro's look, checking the load on one of his pistols.

I took down the case for Frank's guitar. He owned a white Epiphone Les Paul, which he had affectionately named Pansy. Of course, that wasn't what was actually in the case. I flipped it open; Mikey's pistol was already gone, but my seven shot revolver still rested against the velvet lining of the case. Waiting for me.

"Okay," said Frank, snapping the clip back into his second revolver. "I'm going out towards the south wall to meet up with Matt, and then I'll make my way to the east."

"I'm going to step outside through the back door," Toro responded. "And will come around to the east wall from outside."

Frank grinned at me. "It looks like you're searching this side," he said to me. He sounded as though he thought I wasn't going to appreciate that position. On the contrary…

"All right, let's go," said Toro, standing up. Frank was opening the door. I didn't comprehend Toro's words. The girl was walking passed our dressing room, holding her disconnected bass guitar in one hand. She was talking with the guitarist, laughing with him. I watched her step from my sight.

And then I was alone in the room, Toro and Frank slipping out into the hallway and leaving in opposite directions. Toro followed behind the black-haired, pale-skinned, perfect, bass-playing girl. I wanted to follow as well.

_Gerard. Stop it. Stop. You're hunting ZOMBIES…_

But it wasn't like I had a reason not to step out into the hallway. So I did. And wouldn't you?

She was just passing into her own dressing room. She had to step in sideways to ensure the safety of her bass. She was facing me.

Think. I can't think. I'm not even sure I can breathe.

What is breathing?

And why is it important to me?

Our eyes met.

She smiled a little, and stepped into the dressing room. Her band mates were talking loudly, maybe to her. I didn't care. None of that was important, I didn't c…

Stop it! Stop. I mentally slapped myself. Hard. Yes, an eternally hard mental slap. I am hunting the DEAD!

I left the hallway to its misery at being unable to claim the presence of the perfect vampire bassist, and stepped out into the darkness at the edge of the stage. The girl's band…Mindless Self-Indulgence…had two wasted-looking roadies working to move their gear off the stage. They were both smoking cigarettes while they worked; more than a little counter-productive, but whatever. The main lights had been turned on to let the stage guys see what they were doing, but the spotlight around the microphone was still lit. That space of light, that gleaming white shaft of light, seemed perfect and loud and invigorating and…enticingly dangerous. I found myself subconsciously wanting to step into it. Grasp the mic. SING…

I'd rather not explain our search. Because the search grew desperate and it took forever, we weren't FINDING it, and we didn't know what to do. I could hear Bert singing in my head… _Well you're never going to find it if you're looking for it, won't come your way…_

But then it did. I saw it. I was standing on the stage, having made a complete circuit of the building and met up with Mikey. I was going to meet Toro. Mikey was coming, but far behind me. I had forgotten about time, only thinking about how long it was taking us to find the living dead. It had completely slipped my mind that we were here as zombie hunters only to ourselves, in our own heads. To the rest of the world, we were here as a rock band. As My Chemical Romance.

The audience had not forgotten. How is it that I happened to walk onto the stage at exactly ten o'clock? Why? Why does this have to happen to me?

The moment I stepped onto the stage, a roar of applause rushed over me as the audience clapped, ready for more music. What? Thoughts raced through my mind, crazy thoughts like stepping back down off the stage. They were screaming now. And that was when I saw him.

It.

It was in the back row, and it was staring at me. And then it started to move.

This is what gets me about the living dead as opposed to the walking. They have control. He was surrounded by humans, by flesh and blood, but no. He didn't want them. He wanted me. And he had the self-restraint to move around them to get to me.

"Why do they always want _me?_" I ranted to myself, my eyes following the living dead as it made its way slowly, carefully, around the outer edge of the crowd, stepping in and out of light and shadow.

Something drew my eyes towards the stage entrance off stage left. Frank was standing in the shadows there, his eyes on mine. He turned pointedly to look down at the living dead. He knew.

The crowd was starting to scream. They were impatient. They were screaming for music, for someone to entertain them. Frank looked back at me, then back at the living dead. We needed a distraction.

I didn't even think, just stepped forward, standing in the beam of white light left around the microphone. I grasped the mic in my hand, letting my hair fall into my face. I had no idea what words I was going to sing, but I felt somehow certain that I could. That it would be all right.

I started slowly, singing the words carefully, tasting them in my mouth as I said them. I was thinking about Mindless Self-Indulgence and their vampire bassist. "_I see you lying next to me_…" But I would never tell her what I was thinking, "_With words I thought I'd never speak_…" I was amazed at myself. How could I do this? "_Awake and unafraid_…" My eyes drifted across the audience to the living dead. "_Asleep or dead… 'Cuz I see you lying next to me…_"

"_Next to me_," I heard blearily, and glanced up to see Mikey standing nearby, grasping a second microphone, his eyes sinking deep into mine.

"_With words I thought I'd never speak,_" I sang, taking a quick breath, watching Mikey improvising around me.

"_Awake and unafraid,_

_Asleep or dead!_" I raised my voice an octave, losing sight of real words, intelligible sentences, just singing, letting myself go. I was lost in another world, a world of sound and melody. I heard another voice joining Mikey's…Frank...harmonizing several steps above Mikey. I focused on the world for just a moment, seeing Frank, and seeing someone behind him stepping into the hallway to the dressing rooms.

"_Awake and unafraid_," they sang again. "_Asleep or dead!_"

Frank riffed. And Mikey sang, making up lines on the spot, hard and strong, powerful, steady under the wild exchange that was Frank and my voices.

"_I am not afraid to keep on living,_

_I am not afraid to walk this world alone._

_If you stay, you'll be forgiven._

_Nothing you can say could stop me going home._"

Frank is so brilliant. He joined Mikey in that refrain, leaving me alone, screaming my last words over and over, lost in the sound, in the feeling…

My intensity lessened. I drew back from the microphone slightly, letting my screams slowly calm, until I was almost whispering the words – "_or dead…_" – as Frank and Mikey, now completely secure in their lyrics, sang the words over, strong against my quiet pain.

"_I AM NOT AFRAID TO KEEP ON LIVING._

_I AM NOT AFRAID TO WALK THIS WORLD ALONE._

_HONEY, IF YOU STAY, YOU'LL BE FORGIVEN._

_NOTHING YOU COULD SAY COULD STOP ME GOING HOME._"

We stopped of one accord. Like we had planned it that way.

And the crowd erupted into applause.

I felt completely humbled. It was like they actually…liked us. Like someone actually liked me.

I glanced back to the hallway. Most of Mindless Self-Indulgence was leaning around the corner to watch us. And just behind them I glimpsed Toro, standing out with his red Afro. He gave me a quick smile. It was done. Somehow it was done. I had to get to him and find out HOW. And what had Frank done to make it happen?

We were leaving the stage. The crowd wasn't happy about that. They were screaming for us to come back, play some music, sing more songs. "Get back on stage, you bitches!" someone shouted.

I pushed them out of my mind. I was approaching the hall, and the vampire bassist was staring at me. "That was nice," she said when I got closer.

"Thank you," I said.

She smiled a little and I smiled back. And then I stepped by to meet Toro, and see what had become of the living dead.

Frank had pushed it.

"You _what?_" Mikey and I said simultaneously on the drive back.

"I pushed it. It climbed the steps onto the stage, like, completely slow and controlled, like it was stalking Gerard or something…"

"Why do they always want you, man?" Mikey asked. I shook my head while Matt gave me a playful push.

"So as soon as it was on stage, I saw Toro running down the hall on my right, and I was like, _What the hell?_ so I pushed it into him… I think he was a little shocked, to be honest..."

"I was," said Toro, turning widely to the right onto another street.

"So then Toro took it down the hall…"

"We took it outside for a little lesson," said Matt, grinning.

"And that was it. He's destroyed now. A job well done, boys," said Toro, raising his hand for a high five from Frank.

I was, for the first time in weeks, warm inside. Glad that we had once again achieved something as important as ridding the city of another member of the ravenous undead. But I was also thinking about the vampire bassist, the way she had smiled at me, the sound of her voice when she said _that was nice_…

Mindless Self-Indulgence.

**Hey, Killjoys! I have produced another chapter! :D And I rather like this one. It makes me happy, unlike my last update. Anyway…I really wish I could update at this very moment, but at this very moment, I'm riding home from Ohio (yay, I can see my brothers again!) and have no internet. Of course, if you're reading this, it means I made it home and found a computer to update with. So... :P**

**To anyone who noticed the lack of the word "honey" the first time Mikey sang the "I am not afraid" refrain...I chose to leave it out because Mikey was singing alone, and it's not possible to sing "walk this world alone" and the "honey" part of "honey, if you stay." So I left it out. When he and Frank are singing together, Frank sings "Honey if you stay" while Mikey finishes "to walk this world alone." Anyway... that's why I did that :P**

**Blast it to the back row!**

**xoxo,**

**Rebel Rose**


	12. I Get Spattered in Gore

I GET SPATTERED IN GORE

"Focus!"

"Some freak nearly hit me with his car today, I'm a little too busy not focusing to focus!"

"Living dead!"

Bullets.

"Frank, Mikey, stop messing around, I might kill you by accident," I called across the empty parking lot. Well. Empty except for us, and the undead we'd been chasing.

"Gerard, it won't. freaking. die!" Frank shouted at me, accentuating the space between each word with a gunshot.

He and Mikey raced passed Toro, who was coming to help them. As they passed him, though, he stopped. And he stood in the center of the parking lot, gazing at the walking dead (technically it was running) as it charged towards him, arms reaching to grasp human flesh.

"It won't die?" he asked, still gazing at it as though it was some sort of scientific conundrum that could be solved if only he gazed at it long enough.

"Does it look dead to you?" Frank called back, having already put several hundred feet between himself and Toro.

Toro cocked his head. "Yes. But there must be a way to stop it – "

I reached his side then, blasting off three shots in rapid succession. I watched as each bullet found its mark in undead flesh. But he wouldn't stop. He wasn't bursting into all-consuming flames. "Are we using incendiaries?" I asked, feeling like I must have missed something.

"Yes," said Toro, still watching the walking dead. He stepped casually aside as it came near us. I was late; it grabbed my arm. My revolver went flying.

I was staring into the face of death, again. I wondered grimly if I would actually die this time.

Somehow I knew I wouldn't.

And again I was within inches of the face of death when it exploded under a hail of bullets. Why do people always find it necessary to blow the faces off of zombies when MY face is mere inches away?

I could see the facial bones of the walking dead now. That was not a sight I had ever been interested in seeing. But despite the bones of it's face being exposed to the elements, it was _still_ gripping my arm. It occurred to me that it would probably still grip my arm even if we cut its arm off.

"Toro!" I spat between my teeth. "This thing won't give up!"

"How intriguing," he said, coming closer. I could see him from the corner of my eye, his gun casually at his side as he approached. If I survived, I would have words with this man about priorities. Life over experimentation kind of priorities.

Toro was unexpectedly very close beside me. He was grasping the arm of the walking dead, just as it was grasping mine. He raised his gun seriously to the beast's head. It didn't even notice him. "Hello," he said pointedly.

I wasn't thinking about maybe looking away until my face was once again being spattered with blood and gore as Toro pulled the trigger on his nine millimeter, the barrel of the gun pressed against the zombie's head.

Thick, dark blood and small bits of flesh dripped from Toro's Afro. The walking dead was reeling back, most of its face gone.

I took that moment and darted off to find my revolver. Frank and Mikey were running back toward us now. The walking dead was rising up off the pavement, its groans becoming steadily louder, as though there was some tiny part of his brain left that could register anger. He stood, and Frank and Mikey opened fire.

I grabbed my revolver from the ground and turned back to the walking dead. I saw Toro out of the corner of my eye, watching casually as bullets pounded into the undead creature before him. I don't know why, because I didn't think it would help, but I cocked my revolver and opened fire as well.

With my first shot, the walking dead exploded. Flames burst into existence, consuming the rotting flesh. He burned fast, was gone in seconds.

The night seemed eerily still in the absence of gunfire.

"Why…" Frank started to say.

"Wouldn't that thing die?" Mikey finished.

Simultaneously, we all converged on the smoking circle of pavement where the undead had been standing.

"What an intriguing specimen," Toro was saying as I drew closer. "It would have been nice if we could have captured him instead of destroying him…"

"Gee, you're covered in zombie," Frank informed me unnecessarily. He came closer, brushing blood and flesh from my face.

"Toro…" I muttered, glancing his way.

Toro shrugged apologetically. "A direct shot to the head was my best guess at a way to destroy it. The fact that your face was too close to my target..."

"Dude, we may have to walk home," Frank said seriously, grinning.

I spat blood onto the pavement.

Five minutes later we were sitting outside a gas station. Mikey was standing several yards off, spying on the clerk, while Frank and I sat closer to the door, waiting for Mikey to say the clerk wasn't watching so we could step in while hiding my bloody face.

"One guy inside," said Mikey, peering over a stack of soda cases that were about to be loaded into the convenience store. "The clerk looks _bored_, maybe once his one customer leaves, he'll move…"

Frank kicked his foot against the pavement. He was short, hyper, and impatient.

"Okay, wait, he's at the counter," Mikey said, leaning closer to the window. "He's buying stuff…holy crap, he's at the door…!" Mikey jumped away from the window, trying to look casual. I was suddenly hyper-aware that I needed some other way to continue to hide my face. And Frank…

Frank.

So how much blood was on my face? Because it must have looked pretty bad, because as the door opened, Frank grabbed my face with both hands, pulled me closer, and kissed me.

_Holy shit, Frank._

I was vaguely aware of the guy at the door shuffling hurriedly passed us, glancing back once as he crossed the parking lot. Mostly I was aware of the feel of Frank's lips slowly caressing mine, his lip ring, his tongue…

He gently pulled back. His hands had slid from my face to my shoulders. He gazed at me steadily, his eyes on mine.

Then he turned to the side and spat on the pavement.

"Gerard, you taste like zombie," he stated, smiling a little.

Behind him, Mikey spat noisily in disgust. "Dude, hands off my brother," he said.

"'Kay," said Frank, rising easily from the concrete sidewalk.

I was kind of stunned. Too stunned to stand up.

Frank grasped my hand and hauled me to my feet. "Nice distraction," he said to me. "There is no way that guy saw your bloody face." He was grinning gleefully. I suddenly found that funny.

"Guys, guys!" said Mikey suddenly, pointing towards the window. "He just stepped into the backroom, go, go!"

Frank and I broke our casual stance and raced for the door, pushing it open and rushing inside. I kept my face turned away from the counter in case the clerk looked around.

It's mind-blowingly hard to walk casually down an aisle full of candy after you've just frantically raced into a building, after being kissed by your best friend, after being nearly killed by one of the living dead. And when you're consciously aware of every second ticking by, because you know the bus you need to get on to make it back home will be leaving in like five minutes whether you're on it or not. And it's a long walk back to my house.

Frank pushed open the bathroom door and held it open for me. I stepped inside, and he stepped in behind me.

My face did look pretty bad.

"Terrible, isn't it?" Frank asked as I looked at my macabre reflection. "See, you did have some here too, it was like, a big piece of zombie flesh, and you had some down here, but I think I kissed it off."

I snorted, feeling another insane urge to laugh, and began to run water to wash off my face. Frank handed me paper towels, seeming quite pleased by this whole affair.

There was blood in my hair, bits and pieces of flesh; the blood was thick and dark, congealed. It clung to my skin and my hair. My shirt and jacket were spattered, but my shirt was black, so it didn't matter. I dried the blood off of my leather jacket.

"You're a walking biohazard, you know that?" Frank asked, sniggering to himself. Why exactly he thought this was funny…but wait, I still felt like laughing.

"Thanks, Frank. That's comforting." I pulled a bit of flesh from my hair and washed my face one final time. I looked okay. …All right, that's so far from the truth, I looked like I had stepped out of a war zone, but at least my face wasn't covered in gore, which showed loudly against my pale skin. "Okay, let's go," I said.

"We might have to run to catch the bus," Frank agreed.

I groaned. I hate running. I hate it.

We did have to run, but thankfully Toro was already waiting there, so the driver knew to stop. Toro hadn't needed to clean blood off of his face because he had cleverly protected said face with his arm. We climbed the narrow metal stairs onto the public transport, feeling absurdly melancholy after our wild hunt. We still had our guns with us. I was silently thankful that no one searched bus passengers yet.

Frankie and I sat next to each other; he gave me the window seat. I rested my head against the cool glass, thinking about what he'd said…_walking biohazard_.

But why had it been so difficult to kill the walking dead? _Why? _Sometimes, I have shot and gotten no result. But that's fine, you just keep shooting, and in three shots, the fire takes and he's destroyed. That's the most it's ever taken me to bring one down. Three shots.

How many shots had we spent on this one? Like, sixteen? Seventeen? More than twenty?

I was tempted to pull the bullets out of my revolver to make sure they were actually incendiaries. But they had to be…I never used normal bullets any more. The case I had left was in a drawer in my filthy bedroom, almost complete; the only ones missing were the ones I had used on the very first of the walking dead I've encountered.

City lights brushed past us in blurs of color and brightness. I felt Frank begin to lean against my shoulder, the crazy night catching up to him.

It was like his exhaustion was infectious; I put my arm around his shoulders and leaned my cheek against his hair. This, I thought, despite the walking dead that almost killed me and nearly refused to be destroyed itself, despite the gore that still covered me and made my hands itch, had been a good night.

**_"I am an arms dealer,_**

**_Fitting you with weapons in the form of words..."_**

**Sorry for the Frerardyness. I couldn't help it :P**

**xoxo,**

**Rebel Rose**


End file.
